Urbana High School senior Ann Jiang on art: “It just comes to you. It just happens.”
On April 28, Urbana High School (UHS) Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate art students exhibited their work at the Frederick Cultural Arts Center in downtown Frederick. For seniors, the event was the culmination of two long years of artistic development and maturation.
Anna Jiang, 16, is a senior at UHS. She has taken a combination of IB and AP arts classes. “They’re my classmates and the people around me,” Jiang says of her artworks, some of which are portraits. “I know their stories. Rarely will I paint a complete stranger.”
Jiang will be attending the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in the fall. After college, she hopes to become a graphic designer in her own right.
“I get inspiration just from the random things I experience in life,” says Lew Dean, a senior at Urbana High.
Lew Dean, 17, is also a senior at Urbana High. His exhibition is an eclectic sampling of all media and forms — quasi-collage, quasi-painting.
“I started out as a photography student,” said Dean. “It’s been an evolutionary year. I kind of developed and explored more with different media.” Dean is particularly drawn to Asian art. A few of his works experiment with images of traditional Chinese characters and Japanese kimonos.
Dean is headed to Hood College for a mixed major in art and French language. “My dream job would be to work at a design firm,” he says. “I’d also be able to make my own work and sell it on the side.”