With a steady hand armed with acrylic paint, Maddie Beal (12) carefully outlined the seething eyes and jarring sneer of their favorite piece in their college art portfolio: “Harley Medusa.” The green of the portrait’s skin and reds of her expression blend together to form Medusa’s decapitated head with Harley Quinn’s eyes and lips.
“In her myth, when she is killed by Perseus, there’s a famous statue of her and her head is being held up,” they said. “Her face looks really sad. She was just killed. This is a woman who’s been violated by men and who’s pretty much lived in social alienation her entire life. So I thought she should be portrayed with that anger, and something about Margot Robbie is that she is very expressive when playing Harley Quinn because she’s a psychopath and I think it turned out just amazingly.”
When starting the process of putting together a portfolio for college, most art students turn to their past pieces, forming a theme centered around what they already have. For Maddie Beal (12), that theme was the overlooked or unseen side of women.
“You’ll notice women are only really characterized as a couple of roles in the media and they’re often sexualized,” they said. “There will be scenes where they’re feeling a huge amount of emotion, they just have like a single tear and that’s not really accurate. I wanted to make something that will expand more on the ideas of womanhood.”
With this concept in mind, Beal plans to apply to colleges such as Bennington College and Pacific Northwest College of Art, with Sarah Lawarence College being their top pick.
While compiling their portfolio, Beal takes into account different means of symbolism to convey their theme. One of their acrylic paintings, done in their AP Studio Art class, is a woman, made of porcelain, with flowers growing out of the cracks on her face.
“The story behind that one is that this woman would have been mistreated or abused in her past relationship,” they said. “But in my piece, she’s very calm and she’s at peace. It’s very wild but she’s free, and she’s still very calm even though she still bears the scars of that abuse.”
A lot of colleges tend to ask students why they should attend their school in the application process. Sarah Lawrence in particular asked: How do you fit in? Since Beal plans to minor in creative writing, they wrote about their advocacy through story telling – both in art and writing.
“I tell stories through writing and I’m an advocate for women,” they said. “I explained that and I did a whole essay on my advocacy for women throughout my two main sources of art and creative writing. Women have [often] been used as the focus for men in paintings or they’ve just been the idea of a muse. I think women should get their own main role and I want to be part of that change.”
Monty Sasher (12) centered their college art portfolio on the different manifestations of deterioration, including but not limited to physical decay, emotional decay, deteriorating relationships and urban decay.
For Sasher, their love of skeleton structures and darker hues have been carried out through their pieces.
“I like oddities, I’m interested in taxidermy, and I’m more interested in doing tattoos later in life,” they said. “But personally, I like skeletal structures and muscular structures. I’ll do things like that and darker themes because it’s easier to relate pieces to darker themes because of complications in my life.”
As a proponent of grunge skeleton art as well as a cartoon painter for ComicCon, Sasher found it helpful to possess well-rounded skills when creating their art portfolio.
“If I didn’t have any versatility or if I focused on one subject, [my art] wouldn’t have been really able to grow or expand,” they said.
In their finished portfolio, Sasher used a variety of mediums such as graphite, charcoal, colored pencils, acrylics, watercolor, and a variety of mixed media pieces to expand on their versatility as both an artist and person.
A sustained theme is something that Sasher said they strive for.
“For our sustained investigations, we need to be able to relate our pieces to a common theme,” Sasher said. “If you’re not able to make all of your voice flow together or if you’re not able to make somebody else understand what your piece is supposed to mean, then I don’t think that the message will really get through.”
Sasher plans to double major in art and business, first attending community college and then transferring. Sasher said that they want time to continue to build their portfolio, while saving money.
For Beal, continuing art in the future is something that is of importance for them and proves to be an integral part of their identity.
“I want to continue with an art career beyond high school and college because it’s a huge part of who I am,” they said. “I don’t know who I would be if I were unable to focus on that or to continue to improve my skills. It’s something I love to do, so I want to keep doing it until I die.”
