What a Concentration

My senior year of high school(last year) I was in AP art which is an art class where you submit a portfolio with 24 artworks to be reviewed and graded like an AP test. If you score a 4 or a 5 on the test you are awarded with college credit. 12 of the photos are to based on a central idea or theme, this is your concentration, the other 12 are the breadth section, which is artworks that represent your skills and demonstrate good examples of the elements and principles of design. You are able to choose between a 3D, 2D or drawing portfolio, mine was a 2D portfolio that was completely photography.

In this post I am going to post my artist statement along with my concentration photos. I will upload my breadth in a separate post so that there are not too many photos for one post.

The central idea of my concentration is about judgement and what doesn't define a person. I used floral print to draw attention to the things people are judged or confined by.

When I first decided to use the floral print as a main aspect of my concentration my idea was to have it represent things that people see negatively, like my piece where the floral print is on a bottle of alcohol. When I looked at the finished picture I thought about why people see alcohol negatively and I realized it was about addiction, people don’t judge alcohol, they judge the people who drink it. This made me realize that I wanted my concentration to be more personal and have more meaning than just negative things. That is when I decided to change my concentration to the things that don’t define a person. I wanted my photos to help remind people that humans aren't perfect and you shouldn't judge someone because of that. A quote that helped inspire this is, “I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.” by Augusten Burroughs. This just shows that people aren't their mistakes or shortcomings in the past, they are much more than what anyone can see, “they are not where they are from, they are where they are going”.

You are not how much you drink

You are not what you eat

You are not your gender/sexual orientation

You are not the people you have lost

You are not your weight

You are not your education

You are not your makeup

You are not your medication

You are not your mistakes

You are not your race

You are not your reflection

You are not your religion

This was my concentration in no particular order. I hope you enjoyed looking at some of my art, I will post my breadth soon!

For now, thefloralwitch