Taking an old storage room and turning it into a work space, AP Art 2D Design students are creating the school’s first handmade student art gallery in the arts hallway.

“It’s awesome, nobody has ever done something like this before,” junior Kendall Zapoli said. “I think it’s cool that we can showcase artwork and have art shows.”

The plan to create an art gallery has been a work in progress for years, stuck in art teacher Fred Rodriguez’s list of things to accomplish since he was a college student. This year, Rodriguez and his AP Art 2D Design students are taking the initiative to finally set it up.

“When I was in college, my college created a gallery space out of one of the rooms that were in the building, I loved the idea that students could sign up and put their own artwork in the gallery space,” Rodriguez said. “It’s going to be awesome because they’ll be able to show and promote and curate their own show.”

Creating the gallery will take a few weeks; art students are currently painting over the closet space and making markings to set up artwork. Once the gallery is ready, students will then begin creating their own artwork to display.

“It is definitely a form of motivation,” junior Kristen Kirk said. “It lets us grow our portfolio and gives us experience.”

Students can choose to make art pieces of any size and style, and artworks will range from tile paintings to murals. Rodriguez hopes to keep the tradition going as the years pass, turning the art gallery into a historical archive of student artwork.

“They will paint the whole room with their own artwork, if they want to do a mural, they can take up a whole wall,” Rodriguez said. “If someone does a mural on the walls we’ll just paint over it and keep going.”

The gallery will allow art students to look back on the works they have done throughout the school year and be able to show their best projects on campus.

“They’ll be able to put all their artwork and be able to see it as a collection and not just as individual pieces,” Rodriguez said. “It gives them some experience of what it would be like if they had their artwork in a gallery. It will most likely be an open gallery where students can walk in and see our work.”

For many students taking part in the gallery’s construction, its creation is a huge stride towards emphasizing the significance of arts at school.

“Usually, art does not get much recognition,” Zapoli said. “Having a space like this to put whatever we want in it and it’s up to the students, it gives us something to work towards knowing that everybody is going to see it and it’s going to be in a gallery.”