People walked in to see beautiful paintings, sculptures and drawings that surrounded them. Each of the pieces told their own story. On the week of April 25, AP art students presented their work in the AP Art Show.

Before entering the AP art class, students submit a portfolio their  junior year to qualify to be in the class. After being accepted, they have to create 12 pieces of artwork at a college level. The purpose of the AP Art Show is to display the students’ work, according to Stephanie Fuja, AP Art teacher.

Fuja explains that the show is the students’ final assessment before submitting their work to a college board. She expressed her love for the show and the unique nature of it.

“I think the variety of the students’ work is what the really cool part is,” Fuja said. “Everyone’s doing something very different.”

Senior Grace Yang, a painter in the show, concentrated her work on her relationship with her dad and his illnesses. Yang explained how her dad’s failing health impacted her emotionally and lead her to become socially withdrawn.

“All I could think about was just the situation [with my dad],” Yang said.

One of the pieces that Yang felt described her situation strongly was a painting in which she is pushing her father in a wheelchair. She felt that it was relatable for anyone going through a similar situation as hers.

 Jini John, another senior painter in the show, had a different approach as to what she wanted to focus on for the projects, being that her Indian culture played a role in inspiration.

“I think I’ve always been interested in my heritage,” John said. “Culture’s a big part of my life.”

According to John, she described how family and culture were stressed a lot growing up. As for her artwork, John shows diptychs, or paintings in two parts. One painting will show the traditional Indian way of everyday life, and the other piece will show the more modern way of life that John’s more familiar with.

“For the most part they are all my own experiences, or what I envision when I think of this,” John said.

One of her favorite diptychs, according to John, is the ones where she shows the different versions of dancing. One painting depicts the traditional Indian style of dance against the more modern way of dancing.

“It’s very intricate,” John said. “The Indian dancing one is really my favorite because even though it’s [she’s] just a dancer, she’s got the bells on her feet, the markings on her hand, […] there’s just a lot of different aspects to it.”

John feels that even though she portrays only a dancer, there are many intricate details she put into the painting that shows the beauty of the Indian traditional dancing and modern ballet.

“I tried to incorporate [both cultures with] detail and I just think I did really well on that one,” John said.

The AP Art show overall depicts different aspects of art and shows off artists hard work. Fuja expressed her thoughts on the diversity of the show.

“Some are deeper and more personal, others are more surface,” Fuja said. “But I would say not one is better than the other.”