AP Art students bring their portfolio to a close

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Junior Emma Valera works on a piece for her art portfolio. AP Art students bring the creativity to their bedrooms to finish up their portfolios for the year.

Trisha Dasgupta, Staff Reporter

AP Art students are working on finalizing their end of year art portfolios, as their deadline of May 26 is approaching soon. 

“Instead of taking an actual exam, the studio art students submit a portfolio – 15 digital images for the Sustained Investigation part of their portfolio and 5 Selected Works are packed up and sent in to AP College Board,” AP art teacher Pernie Fallon said via email. “​The new schedule gives the art students two more weeks before the ‘exam’ date. They will now submit everything digitally and fewer pieces – 12 Sustained Investigation images and 3 Selected Works.

Most AP classes round off by taking a two part multiple choice and written portion exam at the end of the year, but students in AP Art have to work on their portfolio all year round. 

“The hardest part is definitely getting everything done in the time that you have,” junior Emma Varela said via email. “I need 10 pieces and I only have 4. It’s just really difficult working quickly and still making it look nice.”

Creating an art portfolio also comes with unique challenges that may not apply to other AP exams. 

“It’s always stressful creating an art portfolio,” Fallon said. “No one is more critical of the art work than the artist him or herself. I predict the students will be second guessing themselves and doubting if their work is good enough. This is when encouragement and critique from peers and instructors is so important.”

However, as hard as it can get, Varela finds working on her pieces a much needed stress-reliever. 

“While it is still stressful it’s less than an actual AP test because this is based on like a product something I created and love while for normal AP tests it’s all memorization and if you don’t know something you’re basically done for.” Varela said. “Whenever I feel stressed at all during these times and I can just start working on my art and nothing else matters. It’s really stress relieving to just paint and vibe to music in the background.