The Shield

Artistic appeal: IB Art provides students with chance for expression

Tuesday, February 09, 2010 By John Michael Haynes

As they are paired off, the duos collaborate ideas for their next big assignment, listing their best ideas and finally narrowing it down to one. Their topic: “Together Apart.” “I wanted the students [in the IB art class] to be able to explore their own ideas and make connections between their own artwork,” Fine Arts teacher Veronica Gerber said. With their project in mind and video camera in hand, juniors Alex Barton and Dakota Allen created a project that complimented both of their artistic styles. Allen, who enjoys working with music and movies, made a short video about a girl, (starring junior Carlie Muessig,) who with the help of her imaginary friends, learns how to make real friends. “The movie is about how you need to stop being so uptight and worried about what people think of you and just do your own thing,” Allen said. Barton integrated Allen’s vision with his own creation of a cloud, made out of cotton and Christmas lights, and used the cloud to display the video. “Normally the ideas [for my projects] start off with a basic thought and end up turning into something that is really cool,” Barton said. Although the projects were created separately, Allen’s video and Barton’s screen came together in the end, and the pair was able to present their project to the class. “School board officials came to the school and really enjoyed the presentation. It was interesting to show them what kind of work the art students at Atlee are capable of,” Gerber said. Senior Lauren Wark and junior Courtney Walker also worked to uniquely showcase their artistic abilities. The duo decided on a Native American-themed project to represent their own heritages and to express a message about Native Americans. “We wanted to tell the real story about how the Native Americans’ land was taken, their culture and how they were killed off,” Walker said. Walker expressed herself through her favorite medium, painting. The painting, completed on brown paper, is a landscape and features a teepee. In the foreground, a grandmother stands with her grandson. Wark painted a large battle scene to represent another part of the native culture. Some parts of the piece were made of twigs and came out of the painting. The two also made a third part of the project which housed their ideas together. The section of the artwork was a teepee made out of wood and had overhead transparency sheets over it. The teepee had black figures inside and a light fixture that lit up the teepee and showed the shadows of a figure inside of it. “The whole idea of ‘Together Apart’ was to get the kids to work together on a topic that they both felt passionate about,” Gerber said. “I paired kids up according to interests and their artistic styles. I wanted the kids to make artwork that complimented the other, but could also stand as a good work of art by itself.”