An ‘AP’
for Effort WHS senior art on display at Cheap
Joe’s
By Frank Ruggiero
Pictures are worth a thousand words.
For Watauga High School senior art students, they’re also
worth AP credit.
But before art instructor Shelton Wilder’s senior class submits
its work for a chance at college credit hours, the young artists
will exhibit at Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff from April 1-8, with
a reception scheduled for April 7 from 5 to 7 p.m. Awards and
recognitions will be presented at 5:30 p.m.
A watercolor by WHS senior
art student Win Matsuda. Photo
by Frank Ruggiero
The 2009 WHS Senior Art Show is a culmination of a year’s
worth of work for the art students. To achieve the AP (Advanced
Placement) credit toward college, students must submit artwork
for the exam, Wilder explained. They must complete an online portfolio
to send to the Educational Testing Service, including 10 works
for breadth and 10 for concentration, what Wilder called their
high-school master’s thesis, so to speak.
For Wilder’s class, students are required to complete 40
works of art at one piece per week.
A WHS art department spokesman said, “The skills of communication,
which are necessary for the making of art, combined with the discipline
it requires to master technique are positive attributes for our
students. The determination and perseverance needed to assemble
a competitive portfolio of 40 works helps build important work
habits.”
At Cheap Joe’s, students will display a minimum of five works
each. And with the exhibition held there, they have the opportunity
to take home a prize other than AP credit. First prize earns a
$400 gift certificate to Cheap Joe’s, second a $250 certificate,
third a $100 certificate and honorable mention a $50 certificate.
“That’s pretty sweet for a high school student,”
Wilder said.
The award-winners are selected by Cheap Joe’s employees,
many of whom are professional artists themselves, as is the case
with this year’s four judges, who are also former WHS art
students.
This year’s submissions feature work in a wide range of media,
including pastels, charcoals, pencil, watercolor, photography
and graphic design – practically everything but oil painting
– and the students’ work is just as diverse.
For instance, student David Wilson, whose concentration is on
pencil drawings, drew a portrait of screen legend Clint Eastwood,
whose facial features he thought would translate well to the canvas,
while senior Kathy Cook painted Buddha, due to her interest in
world religions.
Jade Tensi painted a tropical scene to match her concentration
of “things that make you feel a certain way. Win Matsuda’s
series of watercolors concentrate on the inlaying of landscape
with images of the human form, like faces, hands and feet, “showing
how landscape shares the emotions of people.”
Jessica Kennedy has devoted her portfolio to photography, concentrating
on self portraits based on the idea of loneliness. Breanna Steimke’s
has used different media, including pen and ink, ebony pencil
and pastel to demonstrate how different media affect people’s
appearance in portraits.
“I just really like people in general, and when I started
messing around found interesting contrast between real and unreal,”
Steimke said.
Miranda Beard’s work in watercolor and dry-brushing also
deals with the interpretation of people, but through reflection.
Having always held a fascination with mirrors, Beard said her
work depicts people and their doubles, as if mirrors connect would
to a parallel world.
With a concentration on change, Kelsey Hall’s watercolor
of “Our World is Backwards” depicts the sky on bottom
with the sea on top. Hall has also fused the theme of change with
a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi. “I really look up to people
like Gandhi and people who want to make a change in the world
– that’ what I want to do with my art,” she said.
The students will submit their AP work on May 1, and Wilder said
the Cheap Joe’s exhibition serves as a preliminary staging
of sorts.
The following students will be exhibiting there art work in the
2009 WHS Senior Art Show: Miranda Beard, Kathy Cook, Katherine
Cullata, Kelsey Hall, Spenser Hallmark, Carlee Hudson, Jessica
Kennedy, Megan Lawler, Nicholas Lovejoy, Andreas Mannegren, Win
Matsuda, Abbey Reynolds, Breanna Steinke, Joseph Toney, Gavin
Wallace, Kai Weaver and David Wilson.
For more information on the exhibition, call Cheap Joe’s
Art Stuff at (828) 263-5472. Cheap Joe’s is located at 374
Industrial Park Drive in Boone.
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