AP Studio Art was a class full of promise, push, and what seemed like endless projects. As excited as I was to be taking on this new and exciting look into art and the work that came with it, I was very lost when it came to the most important part of the entire class: my concentration. AP Studio Art is a class that revolved mainly around work that would eventually all go into my Portfolio that I would send off to the AP board to be judged and scored. As strange as it sounds, looking back now, my AP Studio Art AP test was by far the hardest AP test I’ve ever taken….including Stats *shudder*. An artist’s concentration is supposed to be 12 pieces that all flow together as a body of work. They don’t have to tell a story, but they do all need to work together in a way that makes them flow together as a solid body of work. I was very very lost on what I could do my concentration on until about October when I realized I had a small love affair with a specific style of photography commonly referred to as Hockney. I took this passion, alongside my obsession with modern architecture and eventually settled on an idea/topic for my concentration. Below is some kind of explanation of what I did:
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My concentration represents the progression of architecture over time, while also capturing a progression of photography. I shot all of these pieces in a style commonly referred to as Hockney, named after the artist who created the technique. What you do is you take tons of close up images of one larger subject, and then piece them all together to create one giant image out of all the smaller ones. It’s a bit tedious, but the “building” of the image adds to the focus on architecture I was looking for in this body of work.
As my pieces chronologically progressed from older buildings and architectural styles to newer, more post-modern buildings throughout Denver/Colorado, my photography also progressed from 35mm film to digital, and from black and white to color photography; with pieces representing transitions using smaller parts of color through the selective hand coloring technique.
In total there are 12 final pieces all in chronological order, starting with the oldest buildings (full b&w), and ending with the newest (full color).
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Enjoy looking through the photos of these projects, hopefully the explanations all make sense! I have them categorized into 3 different sections based on their final oder and the sections of my concentration. Photos 1-4 represent the beginning of my concentration, all of the pieces are full black and white, and of the oldest buildings in the group, they are also the pieces that were shot mainly using 35mm black and white film, rather then digital cameras. The next 4 are the “transition” pieces, all showcase the selective development process, with hand-coloring. All of these pieces are mainly black and white with bits of color, or mostly color with parts of black and white. The final four are all of the full color pieces, showcasing all of the newest buildings in the concentration.
I LOVE how my concentration ended up. Words cannot express how proud of my work I am, and how well I feel like my portfolio flows together. I worked so hard on this for so long, I truly feel like Im completely satisfied with my work and how my concentration all plays together. I know there could have been ways I could have done things differently, or I could have done different pieces, and different things, but i believe with all of my being that everything happens for a reason, and that this all ended up the way it was meant to. Regardless of the number 1-5 I get on a piece of paper in the mail, I worked my hardest, day in and day out on all of these pieces. I gave up days off, I gave up my sanity, my sleep, I even guiltily admit that I gave up working harder in one particular math class that I really should have done more in….BUT, that is the past, and these pieces are timeless. I know that Im proud of my work and everything I put into them, and that’s what matters. I hope to sell many of them back to the places I photographed so these timeless portrayals of these timeless buildings can be viewed by more than a room full of art kids and one super awesome, yet super ridiculous art teacher with a curly mustache.
Concentration Pieces:
The Girl at The Rock Show 
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