On Wednesday, March 25th, sixty-five BSGE seniors each showcased five artworks they created as part of the IB Visual Arts program. This took place at the Aurora Gallery, less than 3 blocks from school. The exhibition took around a year and a half to complete, for seniors had to produce a minimum of 12 artworks for their IB Art submission. In the start of their junior year, each student chose their own personal theme for their artworks, which ranged from beauty, nature, social class, emotion and more. Each senior chose five pieces of art that they felt communicated their theme best. Everyone was welcome to attend the art show, and make bids on possible artworks they would like to take home.
The themes of the work varied greatly, and the reasoning for the themes were very interesting. Isaac Diaz’s theme was identity, which he says he chose because “it deals with a lot of personal things like teenage angst and depression” and because “it was inspired by a lot of movies, music, and culture that I was exposed to.” For Taro Shima, he chose emotions because he’s “not a really an emotional person, I’m kind of stoic [so I wanted to choose something challenging.]” Other themes included decay, which Adela Goldsmith chose because she “wanted to observe the ways in which decay in both man made and natural things plays into our life as people and how you can witness decay everywhere.”
Students had many concerns for the IB art exhibition that were far more complex than the standard conflict of choosing which five artworks to display. Taro Shima was worried about social interaction (the usual) and having to work on other classwork and college applications while simultaneously having to create, exclude, and liven up different parts of the IB Art Exam. For Emily Kerins, she was worried about the negative criticism and other comments that would potentially be towards her art.
Overall, the exhibit was a success with a profit of $800 from seniors artworks sold. According to Mr. Sheridan, the senior class was able to learn about the importance of art. Mr. Sheridan considers that one of the main points of the exhibit is to show the class what life is like for an artist, and the level of work and thought that is needed to pull of such an captivating and successful art exhibition.
The art show was, as Nikolaos Filopoulos said “a really good turnout” and was impressive to see “how well we [the Class of 2015] were able to work as a group.”
The BACC Rag 