Perhaps the best thing I have experienced in the DRHSART Program is the freedom to develop my own personal visual voice. Starting freshman year, I began exploring different mediums. I started off with graphite, charcoal, watercolor, and acrylic paint. As I progressed through the program, I continued to explore different mediums and styles until I arrived at my current style. Today, I utilize magazine collage as the base of my paintings. Once I have painted all the layers, I sand down bits and pieces of my work to reveal the hidden layers of paint and magazine.
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Throughout my entire four years in the art program, I have been invested in my art. Last year I had to pick up the pace to meet my goal of submitting a Scholastic portfolio and have enough art for a senior show.  Last summer, I worked hard to create three quality pieces of work to be submitted in my Scholastic portfolio. These three pieces are what really allowed me to meet my goal of submitting a portfolio and having a senior show. If I had to re-live this past year, I would work a little harder during the last semester so that I would have more art from this year. I am most proud of my art show followed by my gold key Scholastic portfolio. My senior show was my most memorable experience. There, I enjoyed showing off my work to my fellow peers and community. As I leave Deep Run High School, I leave the future students of the program with a few tips: 1) work on summer work early – do not procrastinate 2) take your work seriously 3) never waste time in class.

1. How has your perspective about art changed throughout the process of organizing your own exhibition?
My perspective about art has changed greatly while organizing my art exhibition. Instead of viewing art strictly as a piece of art or performances, I have extended my definition of art to include events, marketing, etc. The experience of creating my own art exhibition has opened my eyes to the numerous forms of art that surround us daily.

2. What would you do differently if you had the opportunity to do it over?
If I were to do my senior show again, I would make sure I would create a schedule. This would assist in determining what deliverables of the show were the most important and help to determine what activities can be completed in parallel with each other. In short, creating a schedule will save you time and will increase productivity.
 
3. If you had unlimited time and resources, what else would you have done to complete your show?
If I had unlimited time and resources, I would consider making a commercial to air on the morning announcements. This would increase the awareness and hopefully increase the number of people attending the show. Despite not having a commercial, there were a lot of people that attended the show. This was mainly because we had our show on the night of a school play. I highly suggest having your show the night of a play since a fair amount of the people watching the play came to see the show while they were waiting.
 
4. What was the overall value of this experience for you?
This experience has been a huge learning experience for me. I learned a little of what goes into good design. I also learned the enormous amount of work that goes into art exhibits in museums and art galleries all across the world. After setting up my art show, I now look at art exhibits not as a gathering of artwork but as art itself.

5. How could this process be enhanced for future Art 5 students?
I think it would be beneficial for Art 5 students to partner with graphic design students to develop marketing material for his/her art show. This would include the design of the title wall, labels, postcards, and commercials. Doing so would teach Art 5 students what goes into good design.

6. What means did you use to promote your show, and how might you have promoted the show even better?
The methods of promoting our show was through word of mouth, post cards, and having the show be announced on the morning announcements. To promote the show even better, I would have created a commercial to advertise the show.
 
7. How do you feel about the labeling system you used for the work on display?
I was pleased with the labeling system that was used for the work. I recommend to print your labels on cardstock and then cut them out with an exacto knife. One system that worked really well was to measure the margins between the edges of lines (before cutting them out) to ensure that the labels are consistently formatted.

8. What setbacks did you have to face, and what could have been done to remedy them?
Looking back, we did not have many setbacks. Other than the fact that I am a slow worker, the only set back I can think of was running out of post cards and having to print more. Although double sided postcards look nice, I suggest that you do not print double sided postcards as there is always a side that is going to face the wall if it is ever hung on a wall. By printing single sided postcards, each person is responsible for his/her own set of postcards and printing the number he/she needs.

​By studying Pierre Mendell, I have learned the importance of simplicity and alignment.  In critique, I learned how to use a grid to help align everything to make it visually more appealing.  In the future, I think the students should not have to use junk mail but should have to use a different medium they have not previously experimented with.  After this project, I hold design to a higher level than I previously did.  I now realize that all choices in design happen for a reason and what appears to be a simple line has a specific function.  If I had the opportunity to re-work the image I created, I would not change my work but might have tried a different image to study.

    “We are, as they were,” is the main point of Raphael’s entire painting. The School of Athens typified the entire idea of the Renaissance. The idea of “We are, as they were” symbolizes the meaning that one must know their past, before one can move forward into the present. Raphael perfectly exemplifies the Greek ideology of humanism, as well as many other fundamental ideas that emerged during this time period.This piece of art was not only a way of preserving the humanistic ideals, but also served as a protest to the church.

    Speaking of a protest to the church, Apollo and Athena are painted in the back.The two of them were not gods the church recognized. Apollo is the god of the sun, beauty, athleticism, music, and harmony, and Athena is goddess of battle strategy, the arts, and wisdom,

    There are many different famous historical figures that Raphael chose to represent as well-known people at the time. In the center of the fresco Plato (painted as Leonardo da Vinci) and Aristotle are depicted arguing over the idea of what is real.  Plato is pointing upward, symbolic of his argument that the ideas of man are more real than Aristotle’s philosophy that the physical form is the most real representation of something. Herclitus always talked about how important it is for humans to experience strife and hardship, he is painted as Michelangelo for these reasons. Euclid, a mathematician in Ancient Greece, is portrayed as Bramante, the main architect of St. Peter’s Basilica. Raphael even put himself in his painting, to show that he too was a great.

    The last important portion of this painting is the Humanistic roots and influences. Plato and Aristotle are the main inhibitors of this idea through their conflicting philosophies discerning form. Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man also showed this, with the square representing the ideas (Plato), and the circle representing the Earth (Aristotle). Ultimately this fresco serves as an immortalization of humanistic fundamentals and ideals.

    This painting is truly amazing; Raphael perfectly captured the ideas of the Renaissance and it’s fundamentals, including many of it’s ancient Greek origins. He was able to represent the entirety of the time period through his piece, truly saying, “we are, as they were.”

          Chris Metze is an abstract, Canadian/American artist who is best known for his mixed media artwork and his paintings. He studied painting and sculpture in Vancouver at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. He is represented in many art galleries across the United States. The main galleries he is represented in are the Kathryn Markel Arts in New York City and the Simon Gallery located in Morristown, New Jersey. Chris Metze is part of the current abstract movement.

          The biggest thing that has affected my work is his layering. Before, I did not find layering in artwork that important, but the more I have looked at his work, the more I have seen how layers make things look better. Perhaps the best thing that I like about his work is how he varies his textures. This adds to the painting and the layering. One thing that I find interesting is how he uses a series of non-organic and organic shapes to top off his works. The painting on the left is my favorite because of the texture on the lighter brown. On top of this textured brown, there is kind of a ghostly white blob that adds to the layer affect. I can tell that he has put a lot of time into his work because of all the small detail that went into each small object/shape he has painted.

http://www.chrismetze.com/#/Bio/

          Vincent Van Gogh was born in 1853. He is considered by many to be a post-impressionist. The impressionism movement happened in the nineteenth century. Impressionism is an art form that uses small but visible brush strokes to create a realistic painting. It is said that he died from a gunshot wound in 1890.

          This style of painting is one of my all-time favorites. I like how Vincent Van Gogh would use a smaller brush stroke on areas that he felt need more attention. Because of this, you tend to look at the fain details in each of his paintings. An example of this is Starry Night. In Starry Night, I pay more attention to the village below the hills. In Self-Portrait, I first looked at his face because of the massive amount of detail that was put into it. Perhaps on of the most useful techniques I learned when studying him was how to capture somebody’s eye and how to make it follow through or recycle through the work of art.


 http://www.vggallery.com/misc/bio.htm 

http://www.vangoghgallery.com/misc/bio.html

        
          When most people think of art, they think of visual art as in paintings and drawings. People do not often think of art as a broad topic. Art can be in the form of a music, dance, product, ability, paintings, books, websites, etc. The definition of art is the ability or application of the human creativity. In our education system today, we are practically being told that art is not as important as other subjects like science or math. We are becoming more and more “standardized” and kids are being forced to retain more and more information. This information is distracting them away from their artistic ability and is often decreasing their creative ability. Art is what built our society today.

          Most successful businesses start with a crazy idea. An example of this is Microsoft. When Bill Gates first showed his work to Xerox, they thought he was crazy and insane for his thought that people would want a personal computer. Now look at him and how successful he is. What I have noticed is when many teachers give me a project, they tell me to write a paper or make a PowerPoint. This often limits my ability to show my full potential and impress others. The more we are limited to things like this, the less creative we become.

          It seems that the importance of art in education is going downhill. Because of this, we are coming less creative and more standardized. What most people look at in education is what job it will get you. Really they should be looking at what skills that course is giving you. This is especially true now when we can’t even tell what will happen to technology or the economy next week. Shouldn’t education be better-rounded and not just based on the four main subjects? I think education should be giving you the skills necessary for future, not fact about the past. One of these skills is the skill to be creative. This skill is intertwined and repeatedly used and practiced in the arts. Because of this, the arts are, and should be, as important as he four main subjects.