Real artists create to inspire. Whether it’s to inspire themselves or to inspire others, we find that great art drives our creativity. This winter, students at San Marcos are creating incredible works of art, some of which are consistently displayed in our hallways. 

Mr. Vogel, our campus sculpture teacher,explained that starting our new semester students in advanced sculpture are participating in the Grandparent Portrait Show and submitting carved portraits from clay slabs of their grandparents. They start by finding pictures of their grandparents to refer to and from there they begin to sketch and carve in their clay.

While advanced sculpture students get started on their projects, many inspiring pieces from last semester have been finished. Junior Emily Kennedy created some worthwhile art to wrap up the last term. This piece was inspired by a photo of her sister and one of her friends. She explained that this was a semester-long process that started with making her own canvas, followed by sketching it out on the canvas, and multiple layers of paint to finish. 

“I was in the advanced painting class and for our term one art project we did a piece called the cropped portrait,” said junior Emily Kennedy. “When I had to pick the photo that I was going to paint I took a photo of my sister and friend, took photos with multiple props and decided on one with them holding a sunflower because it added great color to work with and I love making art that includes nature in some way. For the actual creation I started this project by stretching canvas to our size, we sketched the image onto the canvas, I started to paint a base layer using oil paints, then a main layer, then highlights and details. The whole process took me about 3 months and it was very exciting, and I am very happy about what I created.”

All semester, our San Marcos artists have been using art as an outlet to express themselves. Hopefully, as we start our new semester this will continue to inspire you and others around you.