The Next Picasso? (PB)

As you all know, a handful of art courses are offered here at Lakeview. That handful includes Art Appreciation, Drawing, Ceramics and Art Development. Another known fact is that every student here at Lakeview needs a fine arts credit in order to graduate. Unfortunately, I was not blessed with the talent of singing or playing a musical instrument, so I had no choice but to take art. Most of the kids in my class, as I had assumed, were just there to receive their art credit. I'm sure that my fellow classmates all thought the same thing as me, that an art class would be an easy A and a quick way to get an art credit. Boy was I wrong. You most definitely have to work hard to earn an A. Trust me I'd know. However, I've learned a lot of important things during my experience in art class this year.

The first semester of this school year I took Art Appreciation. For those of you who don't know, this class is basically an art history course in which you work on several projects that relate to a specific artist or art period. For example, when Christianity and churches were evolving, we created replicas of stain glass windows which can be found on the walls of churches. As the name of the class implies, one thing I learned in Art Appreciation is simply respecting and appreciating art. After learning about many ancient civilizations and all the work and effort they put in to create their works, I realized that art is more than painting pictures of landscapes; it actually takes a sufficient amount of thought. For instance, I learned about the architecture of the Roman Empire. The Romans built religious buildings, palaces, tombs, you name it. However, one of their major focuses was satisfying the needs of their citizens. As if it was difficult enough to come up with ideas and draw blueprints for specific buildings, these structural forms took years, even decades to build. As that lesson hit me, I began to realize that art, whether it's painting, sculpting or building, takes patience and perseverance to pursue and commit to. Therefore, I began to respect artists more and appreciate their work as I looked more into it. Another thing Art Appreciation helped me with was embracing my more creative side. Throughout my years in school, I've always struggled with being imaginative and creative. Even earlier this year I had trouble with my narration for my Patterns of Development project in English class. However, in art, I remember specifically one of the projects that required the most imagination and creativity. We were learning about Greek mythology at the time, and our project was to create our own mythological character. After brainstorming for a while, I finally came up with the idea to create a mix of a bear and a tiger. Another project that required creativity was to make a mask to represent something. I ended up creating a Mardi Gras themed mask that I meticulously crafted to resemble the famous festival. Overall, Art Appreciation alone taught me many concepts.

                                              The Mardi Gras mask I previously mentioned.

                                              The painting I created for my final project.

As of right now, I'm in Ceramics class for the second semester. Even though I'm technically not finished with the class yet, I've still learned some of the most important lessons and concepts. First and foremost, being in Ceramics has taught me time management. I even remember specifically from my first day in the class, Mr. Piper told us that we'd have at least three projects for us to do at a time. I can honestly say this has been the hardest part of the class. Right now, we currently have five projects to work on. In March, we were introduced a project in which we had to build a pot from clay coils. The pot had to reach a height of twelve inches. I spent a good month and a half on this pot, which was foolish of me. I knew spending so much time on one project would come back to bite me, since I never started any of my other projects. In fact, I have a slab box assignment due tomorrow that I still haven't fired in the kiln yet. When I get minus ten percentage points for being late, I'll know better than to procrastinate next time. Aside from my humorous misfortunes, Ceramics actually has introduced me to the pressure and stress of being under a time constraint, which may help prepare me for those days at work in the future when I have ten tasks to complete in an hour. Finally, Ceramics has taught me to be patient. I know this contradicts my last point about having to work fast to get projects done in time, but patience really is key to succeeding in art class. I'm not sure if anyone has noticed in the past years, but in the Media Center towards the end of the year Mr. Piper displays many ceramic bulldogs with different designs in what we call our annual "Bulldog Parade." In order to create these bulldogs, we use a method called slip casting. Basically, you take a mold of a specific form (in this case, the bulldog) and you pour slip (liquid clay) into it, then let it sit for a day. Once you take it out, you sculpt your pieces together and you get your bulldog. Well, I can personally say this process is harder than it sounds. It took me three tries to make my bulldog. The first time, the foot of my bulldog broke off. The second time, my entire piece got crushed when I was attempting to take it out of the mold. Third time's a charm in this case for me. The moral of my story was that you need to be patient when creating a piece. Mistakes do happen, but it's a part of the class (mistakes happen daily for me). All in all, Ceramics class has taught me just as much as Art Appreciation has.

                                            My piggy bank that I created in Ceramics class

After looking at my images of some of the projects I've created, I know what you're thinking: I'm aware that I'm no Van Gogh. However, it's not the artistic ability that matters, it's the lessons and concepts learned. As you all have read, I have learned plenty of skills during my experience this year in art class. I for one know that high school art courses aren't a "A for effort" class, but one in which you need to work just as hard as you would in Calculus. I'm confident that when I walk out the doors of Mr. Piper's classroom this year, I'll be armed with loads of new skills that I can proudly say I learned in art class.