As the year of COVID-19 progresses, students in the School’s AP Art program have wasted no time in creating ePortfolios, finding inspiration in both current events and their own passions and thoughts.

Each student created three projects, two drawings, and a sketchbook of short drawings for the class over the summer. In addition, they created blog pages using ePortfolio in Canvas, which act as a shareable link for people outside of the class.

Upper School art teacher Brent Ridge teaches AP Studio Art and and has been impressed with his students’ work and creativity thus far.

“I was very impressed with the works they created and the time they devoted to their practice during the non-school time of summer,” Ridge said. “There are many stunning pieces in the group of works. This assigned part of the class is very important for the students to develop themselves through an independent work schedule in which they are given a wide range of approaches to explore.”

As his students continue to produce new pieces of artwork, Ridge explained some of the prompts that have been a starting point for their creations.

“The class dug into the first unit of the semester, which I redesigned for this year to support the student’s understanding of developing a theme and their style called ‘The Artist’s Voice’,” Ridge said. “This unit is built into two sections in which the students research artists and their styles and then apply these styles to an artwork exploring a social issue. For the second part of the unit, they create a Social Issue Artwork in which they incorporate the styles they researched to a social issue of their choice that they create as an artwork. This second part works to teach them how to use the visual communication of their ‘artist’s voice.’”

Even with consistent work from the artists and Ridge’s redesigned class, COVID-19 still presents logistical problems given the nature of the class.

“It is hard to get your materials, and it takes a really long time for them to show up in the mail,” Ridge said about the complications the pandemic has posed to the class.

Student Betty Wang ’21 shared how the current situation has impacted her work. Her ePortfolio can be viewed here.

“I had to work with limited art materials. I also like to travel during the summer which gives me a lot of inspiration, and it was not the case this year,” Wang shared.