Last year, students taking AP Art classes were given the opportunity to submit their portfolios to the College Board for the AP Test. The test required students to pick an artistic theme and submit 15 related pieces and 5 unrelated pieces. Students worked throughout the school-year on these pieces. The featured artwork below is Mountain View High School students’ AP Art portfolios from last year.

Student: senior Natalie Lo

Theme: What does my room look like?

“I spent so much time in my room throughout quarantine I thought I might as well create some stuff based on that,” Lo said. “I really like how [creating my portfolio] was to do it yourself because when other people tell you what to do, it limits your creativity, but when you get the whole time to work on whatever you want, it pushes you to really have to motivate yourself and want to try something new. I don’t really like painting but I decided to push myself and paint a lot of my pieces which was honestly a highlight.”

Student: senior Elechi Iroaga 

Theme: Travel

“My theme was traveling and what you might see while traveling… I was thinking about summer vacation and missing all the good times from summer and I wanted to do something that represented that,” Iroaga said.

Student: senior Alina Rhoadarmer

Theme: Childhood memories

“This class helped give me experience working on a longer term project. I had never produced something that took up a whole year. In an English class you write essays that may take a couple of weeks, but this was completely different. I was constantly developing and redeveloping my question and reinterpreting my topic to create new art pieces… and you have to put a lot of effort into your portfolio [because] it’s really something that is unique to you. But I think it was a fun experience, I got to do something that wasn’t right or wrong, it was a great creative outlet,” Rhoadarmer said.