By Mandy Hui ‘23
Every year, the Advanced Studio class has a small group of students who explore a variety of topics that becomethe main focus of their AP portfolio concentration for about 15 different pieces. This year, there are a total of three students: Madison Hoang ‘23, Grace Lee ‘23, and myself, Mandy Hui ‘23. To help manage time more efficiently, Advanced Studio students are highly recommended to take an ACA (Athletic Commitment Accommodation) after school to have more time to further improve on our work, and this year, we have all coincidentally decided to take it during the Fall. Along with the current Advanced Studio students, there are two ex-Studio students that took an ACA too to continue their interest in art: Ingrid Yeung ‘23, and Katie Mao ‘22. Throughout the past few months, we have all developed a more cohesive theme that is the center of each of our pieces.
For the Advanced Studio students, we started the year off with a piece that had to contain the still life that is in the center of the studio classroom - placed by Ms. Putnam - and somehow incorporate our concentration’s theme into it. Beginning with Madison, her central inquiry is focused on her Vietnamese culture and color, which she finds particularly fascinating. Her first piece was drawn on a dark moss green paper that was then layered on with a multitude of bright and bold colors to contrast the paper’s color. She deliberately placed complementary colors next to each other in her composition to further emphasise the different objects in her drawing. In addition, she also chose to use colors that were reflective of her Vietnamese culture, especially the color red, symbolising good luck, and yellow, symbolising wealth. Along with the still life, she decided to include Vietnamese cultural objects and patterns to highlight her theme. On the vase she drew from the still life, she changed it to have multiple Vietnamese patterns that can be found on local handmade objects in her country Vietnam. Other pieces Madison did include drawings of traditional Vietnamese meals, and a surrealist gouache painting that contained animals from a traditional Vietnamese game called “Bau, Cua, Ca, Cop”.
On the other hand, Grace had a different approach for the first prompt we were all given by deciding to have her main focus on medicine and the ethics of animal testing. For her first piece, she drew the still life in the studio classroom from another perspective by only including certain pots in her drawing. She added on different spices to illustrate herbal medicine in Asian culture, showing the different types of herbs that are found in a myriad of traditional Asian medicinal recipes. Grace is the only student in the class that chose to use more than one type of medium as she used both gouache and colored pencils. The gouache served as a foundation for her piece, allowing her to change the color of her paper which was originally burgundy and also enabling her to easily create large shadows for the objects in the composition. On top of the gouache, she layered the painting with color pencils to add both highlights and more intricate details. Other pieces Grace did also include drawings of mice in countless cages to invite people to think more deeply into the ethics of testing on animals, and paintings of historical events caused by diseases like the plague.
For my concentration, I chose to dive into the topic of traditional Chinese beliefs, primarily focusing on dragons because of their prominent feature in Chinese culture. Being brought up in a very traditional Chinese household has shaped my daily life tremendously; my mother would forbid me to wear certain colors that are deemed unlucky and fed me a lot of food that would bring prosperity in my life. Because I have been immersed in this culture for so long, I am particularly interested in this theme and wanted it to be the main focus of all my artworks in my portfolio. For all of my drawings and paintings, I took a lot of consideration into the colors I decided to use, usually choosing to use colors that are significant to Chinese culture, like the color red, symbolising good luck, joy, and happiness (similar to Madison’s). In my first piece, I used part of the still life that had different levels of boxes with a vase and kettle on two of the boxes. Then, I added a dragon that slithered around the objects and boxes like it was protecting the objects as if it was theirs. In Chinese culture, dragons symbolise strength and good luck as they also have great power. I purposely placed the dragon around the objects to showcase its authority and possessiveness over the objects, and I also colored the dragon’s scales to be a shade of red. Other pieces I did include a portrait drawing of a dragon's head coming off of a brick wall, similar to the one that may be found in the Forbidden City, and a drawing of koi fish swimming in a soup bowl.
Ingrid and Katie both increased the size of their canvases, doubling the usual size of the paper, so they took more time to complete their piece. Their pieces focused on their individual interests. Ingrid, a Classics student, had her piece encompass a myth: Acteon and the dogs. She incorporated different elements and designs into her drawing from the time period of the Greek myth. Katie, who took Advanced Studio last year, continued her theme of birds from her AP art portfolio. She examined the historical, cultural, and emotional responses birds convey to a diverse range of audiences. The piece she began in the ACA focuses on a multitude of birds, utilising varied and precise lines and bold color to reflect the liveliness of the different species.
Advanced Studio is a rigorous and fast-paced course, however, with all of our mutual passion for art, we have and will continue to produce a range of well-thought-out pieces that convey themes of our particular interest. We are all looking forward to the year ahead of us, especially working and finally completing our pieces for our portfolio.