Students in AP Art 2-D Portfolio and AP Art 3-D Portfolio displayed their work in the AP Art Show at the PHS library on April 16 and April 17.

“The art curriculum at Piedmont prepares students to be a practicing artist,” said art teacher Gillian Bailey. “And part of that is showing your work, preparing it for show and sharing it with the broader community,”

A total of sixteen students have spent the school year working on a concentration, which is a body of work along a singular theme that is united visually.

“In working with something in an in-depth way  throughout the year [the students] develop quite a bit conceptually and have a lot of breakthroughs with their media,” Bailey said.

Examples of concentrations at the AP Art Show included senior Ying Zhou’s about how people are too busy and miss beautiful things, shown through architecture and music, and senior Abby Ramsey’s depicting annoying characteristics of people as insectomorphic figures.

“My concentration is working with topographical lines and the human form and trying to explore that,” senior Marie Marchant said. “It’s kind of random but it looks cool.”

Each of the students displayed at least five out of twelve pieces of art, and will soon be sending them to the College Board for grading.

“The AP Art Show is really cool because what ends up happening is you have all of the artists of different type and different skill in the AP Art program and you have their work for one time all collected and hung up and displayed,” senior Eli Levin said. “You get to see not only your own progress but the progress of your peers, and it really makes the program feel like its moving forward.”

The pieces in the AP Art Show will be shown again at the Piedmont Appreciating Diversity Committee’s concert at Yoshi’s on April 30. The All School Art Show, displaying the work of about 250 students in the first four levels of ceramics and art, will be open by April 21, with a reception on April 23.

“I’m just really proud of all the work that they’ve put into everything,” Bailey said. “It’s a hard thing to make original artwork. It takes a lot of perseverance to stick with one idea that’s your own and follow it through the entire year.”