AP Studio Raises Awareness for Environmental Issues
September 26, 2016
Credit: Bella Cartaya (used with permission)
Cartaya applied her issue of smoking to the Butterfly Effect, which is the concept that a small cause can create large effects, and incorporated it into her piece.
This year the AP Studio class combined with WE Service for their art pieces and the theme for the year is environmental awareness. Because of this, the ten girls in AP Studio chose an environmental issue they felt was relevant and needed to have light shed on. Each girl has a different issue that they are showing in a unique way in their piece.
- Cris Renner has chosen an issue that is very relevant to Floridians’ everyday lives. She wants to shed light on the death of Florida’s coral reefs. Since Florida’s economy is so dependent on tourism, people are not very willing to regulate scuba diving so tourists don’t damage the reefs as much and as a result they dying.
- Lara Lontoc wants to point out the irony of how what could save one area is destroying another. She selected the disparity of the amount of water in different regions of the U.S. Lontoc explains, “while Louisiana is suffering floods, Nevada is going through a drought.”
- For Grace Neal, she became passionate about her issue before this project was assigned. Over the summer, Neal watched Shark Week on Discovery Channel and found a passion for saving sharks. She decided to broaden the topic to marine conservation in general.
At the center of Neal’s piece there is a blue heart which was inspired by marine biologist, Sylvia Earle. Earle once said, “I think of the ocean as the blue heart of the planet, well how much of your heart do you want to protect?”
- Olivia Valdes’ issue of choice is how deforestation negatively affects animals, because she has a love for all animals. Valdes wants to show that it is not right for us as humans to take away animals’ homes for our personal gain.
- Lizzie Dolan wants to connect with more than one issue so she chose something broad: the destruction of the world in general such as commercialization of beaches and trash polluting the environment.
Dolan’s use of black in the background highlights the grimness of her issue.
- The environmental issue Tess Jakubiec chose for her project hits close to home. She decided to tackle the issue of urbanization. Jakubiec shares, “it makes me sad to think the places you had cherished memories in could be torn down one day and developed into a little suburban neighborhood the next. For example, there was a really pretty sunflower field on the road I used to drive by all the time and I loved to look at all the flowers. One day I drove by it and the entire field had been uprooted.”
- As a rower, Gabbie Ragano sees the results of water pollution first hand. Rowing on the Hillsborough River everyday allows her to see all garbage that is damaging local water ways. Academy being on Bayshore makes it easy to see the effects of water pollution as well.
Ragano used wrappers to show how they are polluting the waters and as a result harming animals and humans.
- Sarah Ercia decided the government wasn’t doing enough to help the environment and centered her project around that. She wants to address multiple issues at once and make a statement with her piece.
- Mary Kate Magyar chose to center her piece on how ice caps melting is impacting the animals that live in the Arctic. Magyar did not have any particular reason for choosing this.
Magyar’s piece shows that the melting ice caps are harming all kinds of arctic animals.
- For Bella Cartaya, her piece centers on how smoking affects the environment. Cartaya believes that people generally only discuss the effects smoking has on a person’s health and forget about the environment.
- Liz Benjamin wants to speak for one of the smallest members of the animal kingdom with her project: “Bees are dying and its pretty much all because of mankind. I wanted to raise awareness about this because I love bees a lot,” Benjamin states.
Benjamin’s piece shows the bee being trapped in a cage, a symbol of how they are trapped because of human destruction.
This project is helping to educate not only the AP Studio girls on different environmental issues but also girls around the school.
Sophomore Grace Buckhorn explains, “seeing these projects and the environmental issues they are about made me more aware of the different things going on in the world around me that I did not know were happening before.”
If you want to see all of AP Studio’s projects, not just this one, go to the Art Fest on April 27 and April 28!