JUST ONE THING

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Senior Courtney Mason has spent quite a bit of time in this year’s Photo AP class developing a “overlay” process that has provided her a powerful artistic voice. As she wrote to the AP Board:

A semi-transparent photograph of creased cardboard can act as a lens to add the texture of my perspective. Or an overlay of a second image could show the connection and conflict between opposites; like concrete on skin or vines on a freeway. How I view someone can be expressed through the mask of dreamy roses and glitter. Nothing is just one thing.

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Overlaying textures and multiple images is a way I can provide commentary or an insight into the workings of my mind. My images are meant to show not only the thing that’s being photographed, but also the way I view it.

Photographs and writing by Courtney Mason

MY LIFE IS MINE

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If you weren’t an athlete you were practically nothing. This was a household philosophy. This was my dad’s way of thinking about us kids. If you weren’t in a sport you were working your tail off. It starts in the sixth grade—you do track and wrestling. You follow your older brother’s footsteps step for step; it’s been this way for four generations.

When I was just entering middle school, my dad lectured me about sports and how important they were for me. Then my older brothers all lectured me, saying very similar things to what my dad had said. This was peer pressure, family peer pressure to be the same. Of course I listened to them…I had no choice.

When football started up and I didn’t join, I convinced Dad that football was only for seventh and eighth graders, and sixth graders couldn’t sign up. Eventually he seemed to believe me, but lectured me again on how important sports were and how athletes get paid lots of money. To this day I hear him muttering “If I had ten million dollars, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be hunting every day, trap shooting, and living off the fat of the land.” … Read more →

AGAINST DAYLIGHT

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Imagine viewing the world as if you had been locked in a chest. When it’s opened you get first impressions of an identity, a subject, or figure as you look “against the light.” You can identify things by prior knowledge, but are left to wonder about the details and substance. Each subject is abstracted without clear identification.
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Silhouettes can be a way to explore primary forms, and to remind us we’ll never know everything. Where you might just see the shape of a little girl, I see my sister. Where you see the idea of a street sign, I see the corner of 90th and 90th that I walk by 4 times per week on my way to Brandon’s house. We have only impressions of Truth.

-Writing and Photographs by Kristen Ludahl

A View to Something Beautiful

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When Hailey Smith was a sophomore, she decided to take Advanced Drawing Studio with Carole Harris. Hailey wasn’t always the most “Artsy” person. She had never been known as the “The Kid Who Could Draw, ” but did have a lot of ideas. “It was like I could see the image in my head, but once I went to put it on paper it never turned out the same.” Hailey says. “That’s why I chose to take art. I wanted to get my ideas out of my head for everyone else to see.”
Now a junior at Heritage High School, Smith tried different mediums before settling on painting. She took a photography class and attempted sculpture, but neither seemed to leave her satisfied. She always felt as if there was something more she could do, or didn’t feel as if she had put enough of herself into each piece to call it her own. “Painting is just something that feels right with me.” Hailey says. “When the brush is in my hand running along the paper, I feel like I can make anything without the judgment of anyone else. It’s as if (the work) has always been a part of me.”
When Hailey discovered painting she knew this was what she wanted. “I love mixing colors, and making something beautiful out of something so basic,” she says. “It just seemed like painting was something that fit who I was. I didn’t just choose to paint. It was as if I found something that was always with me, and all I had to do was learn how to use it.” Through her painting, Hailey has found a love of the pastoral in her work, focusing on the scenery of plants and flowers. The colors and shapes seem to just stand out to her more than anything else.
In May of 2010, one of Hailey’s pieces was displayed in the Evergreen Public Schools Art Show. The piece was titled “The Sadness”, and was showcased in Olympia, Washington for several months.
“I’ve never really considered how my art reflected how I saw the world.” Hailey says. “I guess in a way every painting I do is my own personal view on something beautiful.” She puts a little bit of herself into each of her paintings. “I guess in a way,” Hailey says, “my paintings don’t really reflect how I see the world, but they reflect the way I see myself.” In her mind, every painting tells a story, every portrait of an unknown character has its own story, and every flower has its own detail that makes it its own being. Read more →