The AP (Advanced Placement) exams are often associated with the first two weeks of May. Indeed, walking through the hallways of the Upper School during this time, one is certain to find students diligently reviewing notes, doing practice exam questions, and ensuring that they have every piece of knowledge that they need.

But for some students, part of the AP rush isn’t about memorizing formulae or recalling the causes of historical events—it’s not even about an exam at all. Instead, they’re uploading artwork they’ve been working on tirelessly for the whole year. Those students take AP 2D Design. 

What is AP Art?

Unlike most APs, which consist of assessments to determine one’s final score, AP 2D Design—informally referred to as AP Art—is a year-long undertaking. Students choose a topic that’s meaningful to them and create art pieces that reflect aspects of the topic that they want to comment on. As they create each piece, they take photos to record their process, as well as photos of the final projects. After completion, they write short essays describing their process of creating the piece. Finally, students upload their photos and written pieces to a digital portfolio, which enables College Board (the organization that runs AP exams) to grade their submissions. 

Here at BASIS Independent McLean, AP Art is taught by Hadley Rowland, who also teaches art for grades 5 through 12. Her classroom can be seen through its large windows displaying student work, overlooking the entryway of our school. She says teaching the course is gratifying because she’s able to see the growth in her students’ identities as artists over the course of the year. 

Student Works

The BIM Bulletin interviewed some of the AP Art students about their portfolios and chosen themes.

Isabella Shibuya is a junior at BIM and Co-President of the Chinese Honor Society. As a second-generation Chinese immigrant, Isabella chose immigration as her portfolio topic. One painting that she is currently working illustrates immigrants’ struggle of maintaining cultural values in a new environment. It features a woman struggling to stab a stuffed panda with a bent fork, her chopsticks lying discarded to the side. Another piece of hers demonstrates the hope associated with immigration, depicting a family moving into an apartment, with the push factors that motivated their move outside of a barred window, through which a bright light shines, intended to reflect new opportunities.

Sarah Bade is a senior at BIM, and she chose to dedicate her portfolio toward expressing societal burdens placed upon women. “I’ve always felt very strongly about how women are expected to look a certain way…and carry this weight and responsibility,” she said. She wanted to depict these invisible expectations through her visible art. A throughline of Sarah’s pieces is her intentional use of color—she uses a lot of blacks and greys to portray the women, and contrastingly bright reds and purples for the backgrounds. Through this, she aims to encapsulate how expectations of women have “bled the color” and personality out of them, causing them to become monochromatic.  She’s currently working on a drawing of a woman’s heels, balancing a large pile of objects: baby formula, beauty products, and objects associated with household chores on top of them.

An avid lover of reading, Alina Amin can often be found walking through the hallways, simultaneously reading a book. She chose literature and its function as memory as her portfolio topic, evaluating how it can preserve memory and values on a cultural as well as personal level. On a cultural level, Alina demonstrated the role of folk stories in reflecting what different cultures found scary, in a piece depicting horror story characters from various cultural backgrounds, like Frankenstein’s monster or La Llorona of Mexico. When portraying each character, she emphasized the value that made them induce fear in the culture. Exploring the role of literature in memory on a personal level, she’s working on painting a family portrait. However, instead of painting family members who have passed on, she will depict them with lines of poetry in the shape of their silhouette.

Olivia Luan and Sasha Yang are both sophomores at BIM. Olivia dedicated her portfolio to expressing struggles with mental health. One of her pieces depicts the overwhelming multitude of emotions that people experience simultaneously as a tower composed of faces, each expressing a distinct feeling. Sasha has created pieces, but is still working toward defining her overall topic, and she appreciates the flexibility that AP Art affords her as she experiments with her art. 

In Conclusion

Contrary to most APs with set curriculums, AP Art allows students to explore the course for themselves, choosing their topic and learning about themselves as artists with the progression of the year. They experiment with different media and styles, and at times may not know how a piece fits into their chosen theme. Perhaps they make tweaks to that theme. But ultimately, when final projects are submitted to the digital portfolio, students finally see the fruit of months of labor, the seemingly disjointed parts of their development as young artists finally arrange themselves in a beautiful and connected way. Indeed, when asked about the best part of teaching AP Art, Rowland said, “I love to see when it all comes together, and they get to see how things turn out.”