The Arts & Science Center is pleased to host the annual art exhibition of work by Pine Bluff High School students. Art teacher Shalisha Thomas has worked with the young artists. Former ASC Curator Dr. Lenore Shoults said, “the talent at PBHS is extraordinary and we look forward to sharing the student’s work with the public.”
The title of my piece is called The Lonely Girl. This is made out of regular pencil and sets on a sheet of paper. I chose these materials because I wanted there to be a lack of color but where you could still tell the difference in between different parts of her. The reason behind the lack of color is because ever since the pandemic started I felt like there was a lack of variety in my life. People were at home everyday and doing the same things and some still are. This is also why the clothes are plain.I lost my old friends because of a few arguments right before the pandemic so I felt alone the entire time I was home. There was no one to talk to besides my family which can get annoying when it's all about their lives and never how I feel. This is why she is alone and there is nothing around her, I wanted to make sure she looked sad because of how much sadness I felt during this past year. My goal for this piece was to depict my feelings and what the pandemic was like for me.
The piece of art that I have created is called Simple Stress. I have titled this piece of art so due to the simplicity of it. A person might also think of stress while viewing this image. Using our devices to get on Google Meet, Zoom etc. was very stressful especially during the beginning. Everyone had to adapt to something new in life. My goal was to stay true to my stay of art, which is simple, while also creating something detailed enough where people could relate. I wanted to portray a simple picture that portrays stress that they could relate to in some type of way. The main focus or big idea was to make a piece of art displaying effects of the pandemic. I believe that I’ve accomplished this and enjoyed creating this as well.
My artwork has the “Black Lives Matter” logo, an African American boy wearing a mask, the date 3/12/2020, and the phrase “America Will be Great Again”. I used asymmetrical symmetry to give everything in the artwork its own space to be viewed so that nothing can gain too much attention. The media that I used in the artwork are pencil, color pencil, and marker. I used pencil to lay down the sketch, then used a maker to outline the sketch, and used color pencil to color the images. I created this artwork to show the major situations of the pandemic. The “Black Lives Matter” is to show respect to the Blacks who were murdered due to police brutality. The boy is wearing a mask to show how COVID-19 has affected human life. The boy has a black eye to show how some people view America as nothing, while he has a fire eye to show how some may view America as a place of terror and destruction. I used the phrase “America will be great again” to represent us electing a new President of the United States. My goal for this artwork was to represent 2020 and I feel as if I did that. During this process, I learned that our voices are important and I also feel that America is back on the right track.
The title of my artwork is The Masked World. I titled it this because that’s exactly what the world is right about now and that is what my work is describing. My artwork is a blue and green globe with a red mask that has the numbers 2020 on it. The elements I used in this piece are color and shape, and the principle I used was asymmetrical balance. I created my artwork by starting off with a pencil to draw my sketch. Then I tried to use a marker to start outlining and filling it in, but I realized that didn’t work, so I turned to paint. The reason I choose to create my artwork this way is because the title of the assignment was “Effects of the Pandemic”. The pandemic has affected the world in so many ways, but I choose to emphasize two. The first way I did that was by putting a mask on a world. Everywhere you go you have to have a mask on, it’s just the new normal now. The other way I described the top was by making the mask red and putting 2020 on it. The color red symbolizes anger and that’s what this pandemic has caused to a lot of people. I put 2020 on the mask because the pandemic affected the year of 2020, it caused pretty much everything in that year to be ruined. My overall thoughts of my artwork are good because I think I achieved the topic and what I was trying to portray through my painting. Creating this artwork was a really fun experience, it made me realize how much I enjoy painting.
In my artwork, the subjects are the large people, who have a sickly tone in their skin, looming over a situation happening with a person, who is surrounded by the color red and clouded thoughts. Then, at the bottom of the work, the person is slapped back into reality by their dog. The dog continues to bring her to reality by giving her words of encouragement. I created the artwork by sketching out a rough draft of my idea, first. Then later on I could go to use mixed media, but my main materials were markers and colored pencils. I had to improv on some details because my markers were continuously losing their ink. The title of my art piece is called Bark. I know the title is quite odd, but allow me to explain. Ever since the pandemic hit us globally, it has been a little hard to keep calm about the situation. The things we were used to in everyday life are now wiped clean and we have to start another way of living. This includes not being able to see our friends, travel to see family, and having to stay in quarantine for God knows how long.
Then, later on, it caused us panic when the first cases of people dying from the virus came out. At least for me, my anxiety was rising because I didn’t want to be critically sick and laying in a hospital bed, unable to see anyone. Then it would feel like I am losing my mind because I have stayed in my room for so long, it mentally drains me in a way. But, I was able to keep myself under control because of my support animal, my dog, Apollo. He has been there for me whenever I have a mental breakdown or feeling any type of sadness.
One day, I decided to take something from the negative and make it into a positive, and began to improve myself. That’s where I, mostly, got the big idea from to create this artwork. Since my dog is my support animal, I thought it would be a little comedic to have him speak encouraging words to me in the artwork.
The title of my artwork is Corona Depression. I chose this name because I asked my sister, “When you look at this picture what do you see and feel?” She looked at it for a second or two and said, “depression.” It's a picture of a boy who just got up from his work desk looking out his bedroom window desperately wanting to go outside and have social interaction with friends and other people. I used acrylic paint and a regular paint brush. For the smaller parts I used the end of a mechanical pencil. During the quarantine I was stuck inside and I could not go anywhere or do anything that made me happy so I just laid in the bed most of the time.That is why I chose to paint this piece. My goals as an artist is to tell a story and make you feel an emotional connection through my paintings. Doing this project has made me want to paint more.
My artwork displays what happened during the pandemic. I created my work on drawing paper with color pencils. In my drawing, I expressed what was most memorable to me during the pandemic. We were forced to wear masks and be on lock down for months. Schools were closed and we had to attend virtual classes. Businesses were closed and people couldn’t work. People lost their jobs and homes. Families were separated from each other and a lot of people lost their loved ones. The government had to give out stimulus relief funds and the unemployment rate skyrocketed. The figure in the middle is surrounded by a visual representation of each of these events.
The title of my artwork is Now and Then. It was the way that I reflected what the pandemic looked like to me on paper. I sketched up a drawing of how it used to be at school, and how it is now. I used watercolors because I have never used watercolors before so I wanted to try it, so that was a new experience for me. The content of this piece is that school is very different now since the pandemic has arrived. This artwork wasn’t my first idea. While creating something else, another idea popped into my head and it made me think the first idea was basic. Overall, my experience with this artwork was really fun to create.
The title of my work is called Pandemic Classroom. Some elements and principles that are obvious in my work are pattern and space. I used colored pencils, a pencil, and markers to create my artwork. In this artwork, I showed the image of how a classroom looks in today's world during the pandemic. I learned how to be patient when creating this artwork. Before I used to be in a rush, but now I just take my time. My artwork came out the way I wanted it to.
My artwork represents how crowded my head felt throughout the school year. My main goal for my senior year was to focus and stay focused on my assignments and tasks. My head was overwhelmed with frustration and with tasks that needed to be done at that exact moment and in the near future. In the background of my work, I drew an image of a young woman preparing for graduation. On the edge of the figure’s hair, I wrote things that I tried to focus on during my senior year, such as College and Scholarships. I repeated the word Focus throughout the composition in addition to other words at the bottom, Covid and Deadlines. I used a marker on canvas to create my artwork. I am really pleased with my finished product because it is a true representation of how I felt and how I am feeling during this time.
I decided to title my artwork Pandemic Heartbreak. In my artwork I used elements and principles of art. The elements that I used are color, geometric shapes, and organic shapes. The principles I used are emphasis, proportion, unity, and balance. The media I used to create my artwork was acrylic and watercolor paint. The big idea behind my artwork is how I feel while learning during this pandemic. My work expresses both personal and social issues. My goal as an artist is to convey a clear message with my piece that anyone can relate to. My final piece is exactly what I imagined. Everything came together in the end, my message is clear and it still has the original format of my sketch.
For this art piece I used color pencils, pencils and markers on paper. I used the pencil to outline my artwork at the beginning of creation to plan a format where and how everything in the piece will be. The marker was used for a main statement to show that all the setbacks in the piece should stop the negativity on each other and should focus on the positivity we want to achieve in the future. I used color pencils on everything to show changes more clearly such as earth and the cell and the fires. I created this piece with the thought in mind that a lot was affected during the pandemic, and a lot has happened during the pandemic. Although it wasn’t caused specifically by Covid, it shouldn't be forgotten as it could affect something in the future. Although there are a lot of setbacks featured in my art piece, the main message I wanted to convey was through all of the negative things that have happened, human beings shouldn’t be tearing each other apart while the world unravels in front of us. We should be focusing on making sure there's a world for the descendants of us. An even better world. Creating this piece gave me a lot to think about and a lot that I can change for myself. For the better. This piece is named Keep it Together.
In this artwork, Hanging Out Online, I wanted to show how people hang out after the pandemic. For this artwork, I used four characters that I created. The characters are friends and I drew them hanging out on a video chat that looks like a Google Meet format. I tried to show how friends see each other now that they can't go anywhere. I put some disinfecting wipes in the bottom left hand corner to show how some people acted at the beginning of the Pandemic. I incorporated each character’s emblem in spaces on the right in a “virtual background.” For this work, I used markers, colored pencils, pencil, and pen. My goal in this work was to show how friends, family, teachers, and students talk to each other during the Pandemic. I feel that I did a good job on this artwork because I implemented my characters and I showed how people communicate with each other during this time.
I drew two people at school, social distancing, and on a Chromebook doing virtual learning. I used a pencil to create my artwork. No one inspired my artwork, but my artwork does express a social issue. The emotion in my artwork that I was trying to show is a calm and humble classroom with no interruptions or distractions. In my artwork, I showed how the schools enforce social distancing in classrooms. I decided to challenge myself by drawing the figures from a different point of view. I never ever have drawn a person from the backside or drawn a chair before.
The title of the artwork is called Another Day. I created it by using pencil, paper, an L, 0.8, and 0.3 needle drawing pen, and paint. I wanted to show repetitiveness in the artwork, because everyday, Monday through Friday, I need to make sure that I get out of the bed and start school. The goal was to visualize how the pandemic affected us. My overall thoughts of this artwork is I could have done better with some of the painting and inking. To be honest, I rushed the inking process. It's been awhile since I drew a room, a perspective drawing that is, and some parts do look messy. But still, I enjoyed making this artwork.
My drawing is something that you have seen at least once while being in the pandemic. The movement began with the use of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African-American teen Trayvon Martin. With everyone at home due to Covid 19, the movement sparked to a higher degree with the untimely death of George Floyd. So that's what I based my artwork on. While creating this piece I thought it was very cool that he could wear a black lives matter movement hoodie that he re-energized. The only thing that was somewhat difficult was trying to get everything to look somewhat symmetrical but the overall drawing wasn't too hard because I used a pencil. I choose to use a pencil because you don't have to worry about every little thing and when you create ¨happy little accidents¨ you can just erase them. While you're taking that break to sharpen your pencil, you can decide if you want to keep something or not. I also choose to keep the pencil drawing grey and white because I think that having a neutral colored artwork is a natural way to create interest in people and gives the viewer a break from bright or saturated colors.
