Isabella Henry, “Struggles of Self,” Patrick Henry High School

My collection of works depict self-portraits I have completed within the last year. I think self-portraits provide a personal and emotional connection with my art. I have grown to appreciate the self-expression and self-discovery that seeing myself on paper and canvas allows. These pieces specifically identify the decline of my mental health. They cover a range of topics, from childhood trauma to the struggles of living in a patriarchy. My pieces are not always evident displays of these topics, but rather the instances that led me to create them. Struggling with self-expression as a neurodivergent women in a patriarchal society built for the men who created it, there is a lot of my energy and feelings in these pieces. The process is therapeutic and gives me a moment to breathe and feel. The colors, mediums, and styles all have their own uses in developing my pieces. I use pen to demonstrate permanence, oil pastels for fluidity, acrylic and pen for depth and intricacy. The colors and backgrounds provide juxtapositions and emotions. The styles as well also demonstrate the emotions and feelings of the piece, I try to make every aspect of my work deliberate and with intention. Art has taken me so far in the world and without it I would not have this viable form of self-expression.

Cedar Krisch, “Haunting Grounds,” Blacksburg High School

When creating this portfolio, I asked myself the question: "After a person dies, where would their ghost go to haunt?" Most cultures have some concept of "ghosts'', the spirits of the living left to roam the earth after death, whether it be a revenant, bhoot, or your typical Casper-esque spirit. However, what I always found most interesting about ghosts was the spaces they inhabited. 

I wanted to showcase the old cabin where a hunter still roams, the lighthouse keeper on the rocks of his lighthouse, and the old woman still knitting in her living room. Now while some subscribe to the belief that ghosts haunt the places they died, I prefer the belief that ghosts haunt whichever place has the most significance to them. The best example of this in my portfolio is the cowboy's ghost. As an outlaw and a renegade, the cowboy would have been infatuated with the idea of fame and fortune. So, it would only make sense that if a statue of the cowboy was erected, he would want to stay near it to revel in his infamy. Another good example of this is the woman in the art gallery. While she didn't die in the art gallery, it was somewhere she felt at home, being around paintings which inspired her own artwork. 

One of the things I struggled the most with in this portfolio was deciding what I wanted the ghosts themselves to look like. It was far easier to think of where any given ghost would haunt than it was to decide what they would look like. I didn't want my ghosts to look entirely human, but I didn't want to go so far in the opposite direction that they were unrecognizable. The way I remedied this was by mixing parts of each ghost's background with their appearance. For instance, the lighthouse keeper has a fish head because he spent many years at sea, the woman in the art gallery has a form mimicking abstract art because she was an artist, and the student has pencils in his brain as a symbol for learning. I also went with non-traditional coloration for the ghosts, choosing not to go with the pale blue transparent Eurocentric ghosts, but instead using bright colors and an illustrative style. Part of the inspiration for this brightly colored style of ghost came from alebrijes, brightly colored spirit animals in Mexican culture. 

I decided to use acrylic paint for this portfolio for a few reasons. For one, acrylics allowed me to get the bright colors needed to render the ghosts. Additionally acrylics make it easy to layer paint, making it so I could first paint the backgrounds and then add in the ghosts, much like how the ghosts would come into existence in their new environments. 

All in all, this portfolio is an exploration of death and the afterlife not as something not bleak, but rather colorful and nostalgic.

Evan Rogers, “Alternate Universe; Animalia Transmuted,” Burton Center for Arts & Tech

Welcome to Alternate Universe; Animalia Transmuted. A universe where animals are just like ours, aside from their size. Pilots fly on the backs of birds and jockeys race on thoroughbred mice. On vacation you can swim with koi five times your size, just remember to hide your trashcans from the bear-sized raccoon and raccoon-sized-bear before you leave home. And at the end of the day, you can take your cat for a walk around the neighborhood, or just feed your pet blue whale. 

Using Adobe Illustrator, I would start by creating the basic shape of the animal, then refining parts like legs, wings, or fins. Then I would draw in shadows and highlights, sometimes lessening the opacity to let the colors blend better. I used the blend tool with specified steps for repetitive details like the lines on the fins of the koi and whale, and the runway lights. I used warp and twirl tools to create swirls for the fog, water reflections and dragged effect in the background of Mouse Race, and clipping masks for the clouds and fins. Gradients were mostly used in the backgrounds with lowered opacity layers to create a sense of depth, and I used a grid repeat for the pattern on the carpet of Cat and Dog. For the background of Mouse Race, after using the warp tool I created multiple background layers, lowered the opacity of the non-original layers, and aligned them vertically while keeping space between them horizontally to create a blur effect that I felt better suited the style, instead of using a rasterized gaussian blur.  

I wanted to retain a semi-simplistic illustration style to go with the fun concept, and Adobe Illustrator was the perfect software, as it forces me to consider where to place every shape, path, and layer. While working like this I had to think of each piece like a puzzle, and when completed everything had to fit into the right place. I am incredibly grateful for the support from my teachers while creating this portfolio and all the skills I learned while creating this.