SENIOR SPOTLIGHT: Painting the Future

For the “Most Creative Imagination” superlative, senior friends Mia Palmer and Ella Berrend won the senior class over with their talent and innovative ideas. The pair shares an AP art class together, so it’s no wonder the class awarded them the title. 

While the two share the art class, they are also in a lot of other classes together where they are forced to create new ideas and it’s definitely benefitted. “Honestly, I think I’m good at making ideas from scratch because I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember.” Ella remarked, “The last art show I can remember being in was in second grade.” She chuckled. Ella is in yearbook and journalism, and while both are similar, they’ve helped her grow and pitch new ideas to bigger groups of people. In fact, Ella helped pitch the idea of the theme and cover of the yearbook this year. “I had gotten procreate at the beginning of the year and decided to do a rough sketch of what I thought would be best for my senior yearbook, and it ended up getting approved by everyone.” 

“I think having a creative imagination is thinking differently than everyone else and coming to different conclusions than others around me,” Mia commented on the title. “It can be something small, like how you wake up in the morning, versus how others wake up and do their morning routine.” 

While they share many creative classes together, Mia flourishes more in the art classes. “I like coming up with new ideas for myself and others,” Mia continued, “I like helping people come up with their concepts and ideas. Ella and I are in art together and doing art in a classroom setting with a curriculum can be a really big change for people who haven’t done it before. I’ve been in art classes every year since being a freshman so I’m able to help Ella translate her concepts from ideas to the canvas.” In the AP art course, you have to choose a base idea that you will carry throughout the rest of the year. 

Ella decided to base her projects on colors, chakras, and human emotion. Chakras were an idea that really intrigued Ella as they were focal points in the body that have meaning and emotion tied into it. “I was really fascinated by the story behind each color story, and my blue piece, ‘Seeing it All’ was definitely my favorite because of the mediums I used and the detail within each portrait of the piece.” The piece was five portraits of different people of various ages, genders, and cultures with different facial emotions that represented what the color blue meant to the art student.

Mia based her year’s worth of projects on how different locations form identities. Most of her pieces had some form on nature in them and her first one was solely a nature landscape. She used a calligraphy pen and watercolor for the first piece. “I don’t have a favorite piece exactly, but I have work that I’ve enjoyed more than other pieces, or pieces that I’ve been proud of,” Mia answered when asked what her favorite piece is. 

Ella almost didn’t join AP art this year, and it’s actually the first art class she’s taken of her high school career. Mia had joined the class from the beginning of the semester so she encouraged Ella to join so she could have a bit of a challenge. Although Ella was late to the game, Mia has had years of experience with art and has been known to be very creative in her English and art classes, and though the two have had different experiences in the artistic field, they both are working towards the same goal of creating pieces that convey ideas and a hobby they love.