How does it feel to have achieved such a score on your exam?
It feels super, it feels like you are on top of everything you have been doing to achieve this recognition. I was surprised that I had the highest score that I could get, however I was mostly aiming to score a 4, because I felt like I had only a few actually good pieces of art.
Were there any specific challenges you faced during the exam, and how did you overcome them?
The AP art exam isn’t even an exam after all, it is a pretty straight-forward upload of all of your artwork and materials. I was able to get some encouragement for myself when I received a 10/10 for the first time when I wrote my AP essay about my SI statement. It was pretty challenging for me to balance creating artworks, and doing writing assignments for my other classes. My time management wasn’t always organized properly, and I have always been that last-minute person. So I tried to save some art-making time on the weekends.
How did you choose the pieces for your portfolio, and what was the inspiration behind them?
It was important for me to capture some of the basic aspects of immigration, that is, entering a new place, cultural differences, and other challenges that these immigrants face. Me and my mom are also immigrants from Russia, and we lived in the United States for a long while now, together we went into the melting pot like most immigrants. I looked up for inspiration in our own personal experiences and what most immigrants experience due to leaving their homelands and entering a new country to live in due to many circumstances in the world, whether that be environmental disasters, or human-factor issues.
Can you share some insights into your creative process? How did you approach a new art project?
I always say that inspiration is the number one mental fuel for the artist and for any other creative human being, and whenever I had to create a new art piece, it could be anything, as long as in the end, it creates a visual story, taste, and certain emotions and lessons that rhythm and movement drives in the piece.
Did you have any favorite techniques/mediums that you focused on in your portfolio?
My primary media in general is colored pencil, which I often put on top of acrylic paint, which is also one of my favorite medias. Often paint makes not only rich textures, but also more valuable as painting can sometimes be a long and hard process, especially when creating something precise.
Were/are there any artists or art movements that particularly interest and/or influenced your work?
Other than sources of inspiration from the outside world, I tend to look up to my classmates’ work, and what techniques they use to create their pieces of art. Alongside with inspiration, my mental seesaw swing always lowers down to my own originality, style, and ways of how to create a visual story in my artwork.
Were there any specific classes and/or teachers that played a significant role in your artistic
development?
The significant role in my artistic development was always taken by my art teachers, generally Mr. Chris Triner and Mrs. Tam Grandjean; they were and will always be my artistic inspiration and guidance for successful art-making process, and visual-storytelling. Throughout four years at Hoover, they opened so many doors in my mentality in the art field to explore, learn, and recognize new techniques when creating something new and relatable in professional art.
Are there any specific themes or messages you aim to convey through your art?
Whenever I want to create something that will leave an impression on a viewer, this can be easy through common sense and interests, but not on every single viewer or critic. Anything can be the focal point in an artwork, but not every focal point can tell the whole story, if it’s not in a strong position.
Can you recall a favorite memory you have created throughout this art-making process?
Earlier I considered mid-critiques as my least favorite parts of the AP Art semester, since I often received a lot of mixed feedback, but now I understand that critics are important and valuable, if the artist wants to turn this into motivation to make the artwork better. Also one of my most memorable moments of AP Art, is when at the end of the year we got to write letters to ourselves and read them to the rest of the class, describing how we grew, how we developed our portfolios, and what advice we would give to the younger art students. It felt like a farewell, but a powerful farewell, since I knew I wouldn’t stop doing art in the future, and that I was able to give a sense of encouragement for my studio mates and younger art students.
