By N’Nia Brickhouse, Staff Writer
Rape culture. Coping mechanisms. The beauty behind ballet. Human and animal interactions. Decay of relationships. The romanticization of social media. These are all the sustained investigations that First Flight’s AP Art students have decided on for their portfolios.
Students in AP Art create a two-part portfolio, one consisting of 15 images showing how they work as an artist, and the other including their five favorite completed pieces from the class. The completed works all relate to the sustained investigation that each student chose. Alice Baldwin, the AP Art teacher, explained how the sustained investigations work.
“Sustained investigation is inquiring on one question and creating a group of artwork based on that question,” Baldwin said. “You turn in 15 images that are inviting the AP judges into seeing how you work as an artist, so you can turn in planning, you can turn in process photos, you can turn in final pieces of work. The second portion of the portfolio is the Selected Works, which are your top five best pieces of artwork that you’ve created in the past year.”
AP artists spend the entire semester working on pieces for their portfolios. Unlike how normal art classes work, AP artists aren’t given prompts for their projects.
“The fact that it is student guided does weigh a lot on them and their thoughts and their ideas versus me presenting each project to them,” Baldwin said. “So it does take a little bit more thought as the artist, which I feel like sometimes is a little hard but something that they’re totally up for.”
Senior Allegra Mackenzie-Reece is taking AP Art for the second time. Last year, her sustained investigation was the male gaze. Keeping to a theme, she chose rape culture for this year.
“(My sustained investigation is) kind of like how society perpetuates rape culture and violence against women and how men benefit from it,” Mackenzie-Reece said. “Last year, my theme was the male gaze, so it’s kind of branching off of that.”
Mackenzie-Reece decided on her sustained investigation after hearing about women who go missing on true crime podcasts.
“We – me and my family – went skiing and on the way back we were listening to a lot of true crime podcasts, and a lot of the stuff revolves around women going missing or dying,” Mackenzie-Reece said. “So it’s just sad to me, like how often they go missing and no one really cares, especially if they have worked in sex work or they do drugs.”
So far in the class, Mackenzie-Reece has finished one piece, a print from her Art IV class. Her plan for her portfolio is to make surrealism-inspired pieces.
“I wanted to go into more surrealism, so like Salvador Dali kind of stuff,” Mackenzie-Reece said. “I take inspiration from a lot of the stuff I read, though. So I wrote down media I like and essays and stuff.”
To Mackenzie-Reece, there aren’t many differences between AP Art this year and last year, only that instead of submitting the Selected Works online, this year, the artists have to send in their pieces.
Senior Zoe Lucas decided on coping mechanisms for her portfolio.
“I’m still trying to narrow it down, but basically it’s on coping mechanisms and what leads people to have to use them,” Lucas said. “Everyone copes with something. I’ve just seen a lot of it, and I think it’s something that a lot of people can relate to.”
As far as inspirations go, Lucas is simply doing whatever she wants to do in the moment.
“I feel like I’m just going with my own thing,” Lucas said. “It’s kind of all over the place, a lot of different mediums and basically I’m kind of just doing whatever.”
Senior Hannah Montgomery’s sustained investigation is the beauty behind ballet.
“I’m doing the beauty behind ballet and showing really the injuries that dancers push through and how difficult it actually is,” Montgomery said. “I’ve been a dancer since I was 5, so it’s something that I can do that’s really personal to me. And I’m able to put myself into each of my pieces.”
In Montgomery’s first piece, she created the background by putting paint on ballet slippers and dancing over it.
Montgomery takes inspiration not only from her own dance pictures, but documentaries, movies and the experiences that she’s seen other dancers go through.
“I’ve watched a lot of ballet documentaries and movies since I have been doing dance for so long,” Montgomery said. “So I’ve really just based what I’ve found them to go through in the movies and what I’ve seen people at my dance studio go through, and I’m really just taking that and trying to show it through art instead of just speaking it.”
Human and animal interactions is the sustained investigation of senior MacKenzie Greenleaf.
“I’m trying to venture out into different things,” Greenleaf said. “Right now I’m kind of switching the human and animal roles. The animals are the people and then the people are the animals.”
Greenleaf decided on her investigation after creating pieces involving animals last semester and is taking a different approach to her theme.
“I wanted to take a more fun approach to some of them because I don’t like doing things too seriously,” Greenleaf said. “So I wanted to do stuff that is more fun like this. Instead of just focusing on the bad that can happen, like in between the interactions, I want to focus on more fun topics.”
Junior Marin Remige’s sustained investigation shifts from life and animals to death and the deterioration of the connections made in life.
“I’d say it’s mainly about decay and the decay of relationships,” Remige said. “I really just based it around wanting to have something that was beautiful looking but was more scary underneath or just, you know, acceptance.”
Remige is working on her second project, a mixed media piece inspired by Alphonse Mucha.
“My main subject is a woman resting surrounded by moss and greenery, her back is facing the viewer and she’s in a cavern-like space lying just before the cave’s opening,” Remige said. “This project represents the second stage I’m focussing on, which is bloat. She’s just left her previous situation and she’s a bit numb, she’s letting things build up and she feels kind of stuck and exhausted.”
Junior Ava Norko’s sustained investigation focuses on how idealized social media is and how it affects those on it.
“My sustained investigation is social media and how much we romanticize it, and how it can change our moods drastically based on what we see,” Norko said. “I chose this theme because myself, along with many other people I know, have all felt some way about social media, whether it was super happy because a TikTok blew up, or super upset because you saw this beautiful girl with the ‘perfect’ life.”
In Norko’s first piece, she took inspiration from common facial features she’s seen on social media.
“The inspiration I used in my first piece was different facial features similar to ones I see all over social media: beautiful eyes with long lashes, big, full lips and a small nose,” Norko said.
Through the years of teaching AP Art, Baldwin most enjoys watching her students find their voice as they make art.
“It’s probably a highlight of my career to be able to watch students develop their skill and find their interest and passion inside of art,” Baldwin said. “They find their voice throughout the four-year process and really make meaningful artwork.”
Sophomore N’Nia Brickhouse can be reached at 24brickhousenn92@daretolearn.org.
