AP classes are familiar to many students at Lexington High School. But unlike the clear-cut formulas of STEM APs like AP Calculus and AP Chemistry, LHS’s AP Art class is more subjective. So how does AP Art balance the standardized nature of the College Board with the abstractness of creative expression?
According to AP Art teachers Ashley Grant and Jessica Sperandio, the answer is structure.
“Week by week, we have objectives, and folks put their work into a personalized slide deck to keep things organized. There’s also quite a bit of reading in AP Art where students have to list their materials, their processes, their size, and also give a summary of their AP topics,” Grant said.
Structure also includes giving students time to plan out their own objectives.
“There’s studio time, where students start coming up with their own ideas and making work about their topic. Typically, they make between six and eight finished pieces about one topic,” Grant said.
Three types of AP Art exams are offered at LHS: 2-D, Drawing, and 3-D.
“In a Drawing [class] exam, there’s a focus on art-making, and with the 2-D exam, there’s more of a focus on composition overall. 3-D is a system where you are looking at work in the round,” Grant said.
Beyond the differences in disciplines and materials, Grant and Sperandio’s classes operate fairly similarly. Their guidelines align with those of the College Board’s—including the lack of a final “exam.” Instead, students are asked to provide a portfolio and documentation of their process just like the actual AP assessment.
“The exam is based on a sustained investigation, so students are really investigating something they are interested in with a question, and then we provide assignments and lessons that they can use their question for,” Sperandio said.
One might wonder if these guidelines hinder the artistic process. However, AP Art students don’t think so—instead, they see these guidelines as a challenge they must incorporate into their art.
“When you are creating art, you don’t want to be like, ‘Oh, I could just create [art] about anything.’ You want to push yourself to create motifs and more ideas surrounding that topic and kind of push that topic farther, as well as your artistic abilities,” Sophia Hachkowski, a junior in AP, said.
The AP guidelines, though structured, also encourage the pursuit of certain artistic skills, techniques, and creativity.
“AP Art is important because it goes through a lot of skills. For example, the experimentation and revision that students are going through, but also what art making is,” Amaya Oo, a senior and student teaching assistant for AP Art, said.
Overall, AP Art is a course that pushes students to pursue art at a deeper level.
“Everyone thinks so differently, and it’s so cool to just have them [take a] deep dive into their interests. You get to really learn about people, what they’re interested in, and what they make,” Sperandio said.
But more creativity does not mean less work.
“I think a lot of people think that AP Art is just an easy AP, but it’s different from that because AP Art has a lot of different aspects you’re going through. You’re going through the writing for your pieces as well as creating your pieces, and you’re also doing a lot of time management with that as well because you have to create a full piece in a week and a half,” Oo said.
Ultimately, while the class is labor-intensive, that labor is driven by love.
“If you’re already stressed, or you know you’re going to be stressed and don’t love [art], don’t do it. But if you do love [art], I promise you, you’re gonna love it. It’s so much fun,” Hachkowski said.
