By Samantha Huntington, Community Engagement Assistant
November 21, 2024
Winter Park Library’s 18th annual Art Happens Teen Art Show is in full swing! This yearly exhibition celebrates the incredible talent of young artists in our community, showcasing a variety of mediums like photography, oil painting, block printing, and more. You can explore all the stunning pieces at the Center for Health and Wellbeing through December 1.
Curious to hear from the artists themselves? Our Best in Show and Honorable Mention winners share their insights and creative processes in these exclusive interviews.
Self Portrait in Qi-pao (Acrylic)
Q: Why did you create this piece with this particular medium?
A: I have always liked painting, I think it's often a therapeutic release for me after a long day of school. But honestly, I am a oil painter. I am a huge lover of neoclassicism and any classical art movement and I take a lot of inspiration from them. These art movements use predominately oil paint but I often choose to use acrylic paint because it dries quicker. Acrylic in my opinion is much rougher and the color is a lot more vibrant than oil paint and thus I prefer oil paint. But I often choose acrylic because it's more convenient for art projects and its more versatile.
Q: What was your process to create this piece?
A: Honestly, it's quite a simple process. I recruit my mom as photographer for me while I pose and then I draw a rough sketch based on the photo. Then add some of my own creative touches like on the intricate details. After all of that I find the most suitable canvas and sketch on it. Then I apply layers of paint on top of the sketch and at the end I add the finer details. This is the most basic summary of my process and I repeat it for every art project I do.
Q: What do you want people to take away from this piece?
A: I want people to go online and google what a Qi-pao looks like, or the history behind fans in China. I try to incorporate as many Chinese elements as possible into my pieces because I want people to notice them and understand my culture a little bit more. I want people to move past the general understanding of my culture and truly appreciate it for what is good about it because I find joy in doing the same when I look at art. This applies to all of my art pieces as I try capture rare elements that is underappreciated and try to push its beauty into my pieces. Even if someone just asked me "what are you wearing in the piece you did", I would feel like I accomplished the goal I set out to do. China past all of its conceptions deserve to be appreciated for its history and contribution in every single industry. I'm just a student artist trying to capture one of their pieces of history among the millions but to me, that's what my art and this piece sets out to do.
Queen of Diamonds (Oil)
Q: Why did you create this piece with this particular medium?
A: Personally, oil painting is one of my favorite mediums. For this piece I wanted to work with something I was comfortable with so I could focus more on the accuracy. I had never painted jewels before and wanted to create a semi realistic look to them so using oil paint helped make it easier on me.
Q: What was your process to create this piece?
A: The first step to this piece was to pick what I wanted my two opposite sides to look like. I am a fan of color so I wanted to play into that with the opposing warm and cool tones. In my self portrait I used the hair to differentiate my faces while staying focused on color as the main aspect. After painting the faces I added jewels in the middle to play into the card of diamonds and I tried to make them mirrored from left to right as best I could. After the jewels I wanted the background to pop so I thought black would be a good idea. To make sure the faces didn’t get lost in the dark background I added a glow around the portraits with the opposite toned color to make them pop even more.
Q: What do you want people to take away from this piece?
A: Experiment with colors and don't be afraid to try something new or take risks.
Oliver (Block Printing)
Q: Why did you create this piece with this particular medium?
A: I created my art piece because I wanted to make a gift for my aunt by making a print of her cat.
Q: What was your process to create this piece?
A: I carved linoleum and printed it on paper with a printing press and framed the final outcome.
Q: What do you want people to take away from this piece?
A: I want them to see how cute her cat is and how I used my skills to create something to show her how much I love her.
BONUS: I take inspiration from my life/ things I experience, and I am so grateful my art was shown. As they say in Hamilton, I am not throwing away my shot.
Through the Little Door (Mixed Media)
Q: Why did you create this piece with this particular medium?
A: Although I didn't go into this project with everything planned out, the multiple mediums I used to create it was thought through. The various materials I used helped me make this piece more visually appealing than if I had not used a wide range of supplies. The background, for example, couldn't have had a washed-out look if I used marker instead of watercolor which I had used to create bolder color in the center of the drawing.
Q: What was your process to create this piece?
A: The process for creating this piece was pretty simple; I planned out the idea with lots of thumbnail sketches and then recreated my favorite one in big. The coloring went smoothly and I was lucky that I didn't run into any major issues, but I did need to change the perspective I was drawing at multiple times during the process. I'm really happy with how it turned out because I think it was a reflection of how much I have learned since I started art.
Q: What do you want people to take away from this piece?
A: There isn't really anything deep that I hope people would take away from this piece except to recognize your progress. Last year at this time, I was struggling not just with motivation to get up and create art, but with skill as well. It's crazy to look at how much of a difference there is between when I first started and now because I probably wouldn't have thought I would ever even get an honorable mention, but I'm extremely grateful to see that other people think so as well!
BONUS: Finally, something I find interesting about my piece is how the references to the movie Coraline reflect how it can be interpreted differently every time someone watches it. Hidden details can be found throughout the movie and my piece as well and that makes it compelling to the eye and mind, which was originally the goal with my project. At the end of the day, this piece that I created is fundamentally an ode to the visually stunning movie that Coraline truly is.
In the Storm (Digital Photography)
Q: Why did you create this piece with this particular medium?
A: I had a high-speed photography assignment in my Photo 1 class. It was the day of the hurricane and I thought it would be perfect to capture paper flying in the air.
Q: What was your process to create this piece?
A: I burned/ripped a few sheets of paper, as you can see in the photo, to be thrown. I asked my mom to help throw them. I didn't originally have the idea of her being one of the subjects in the picture, but once I looked back on the photos, I realized It looked better with her in it, as I believed it added character to the piece.
Q: What do you want people to take away from this piece?
A: I think what the photo really captures is that when you are in "a storm" (or having a difficult time/upset), everything can seem dark and negative. It can cloud our judgment and alter how we look at life. Of course, the storm always passes, we realize how dramatic we were and how strong our emotions can seem.