Rocklin High School has a wide variety of talented students who represent the school from athletes with their respected sports, club presidents, ASB officers or band students. But there’s one particular group of students that do more for Rocklin than one might think, that being art. When people think of art they may think of drawing little doodles in their notebooks during class just to pass the time, while that might be true there’s more than what meets the eye.
Ask Rocklin senior Audrey Guzman, an Art IV Honors student who explains that it’s a lengthy process, “Honestly, it’s crazy but a lot of the time actually goes into just preparing how you’re gonna do it. You need your ideas, you need to know what medium you’re doing and even if you’re not prepared like that, it still takes a lot of thinking to get it to look how you need it to look. And during that time, do you have other people look at your artwork and say “oh hey”, maybe you can improve on this, or whatever you like to have.” Creating one art piece is not a simple task as it still takes some time and effort, “It really depends, honestly, but I range it from five to like 12 hours”, says Guzman. But that’s only a part of what art students do for school, there’s a variety of projects students get to do that showcases each students creativity and skills.
These are mainly created by drawing or painting but takes a lot of patience and good craftsmanship to make these pieces look really eloquent. Senior Brayden Thorpe, another Art IV student, says “Most projects take two weeks but the bigger ones take almost a month, if not longer”, highlighting the fact that these projects take a lot more time than one may consider it should take. Most of these projects take place in class but only a few that are much bigger projects take place outside of class, one of those being the homecoming (HOCO) stairs.
Every year Rocklin High School paints the stairs in the amphitheater in advance for homecoming. Each class gets a section of the stairs where 4 different murals are painted to represent a specific icon for the theme. This year’s theme is Pixar films so each class is representing a different film, Freshman get Finding Nemo, Sophomores have UP, Juniors have COCO, and seniors get Toy Story. This is where things can get difficult for because it not only requires a person’s own skills but also good teamwork as multiple people are needed to get the project completed.
Before After
Senior Hadley Jantz has previous experience working on the stairs, “my last two years in art, we worked on the homecoming stairs. And I think that working collaboratively as a class is a lot harder than working on your own projects”, Jantz says, “because you have to kind of use everyone’s strengths in order to create the best possible outcome. And it can be very difficult at times because some people might not agree on the same idea…”
With differing views of how it should look like working with other people can be a challenge since everyone wants to have their ideas come to fruition, especially a big project that’s on display for the whole school to see. Guzman describes it as “a love-hate relationship where you kind of just have to trust the whole process in the middle, like you never really know how it’s gonna end up coming out. And it’s definitely frustrating, but you just have to push through and hope and pray that it turns out good.”
Despite the potential challenges during the project it’s still a good experience for each student as Hadley believes “it brings us together and closer as a class because we learn to appreciate each other’s strengths and abilities.” Thorpe also says that everyone gets to have their own input and be able to share their ideas with others, “pretty often, I think, it seems pretty collaborative and everything. Ideas aren’t really ignored or anything like that, It’s pretty smooth, I think.”
“All types of art are equally important and equally beautiful” – Brayden Thorpe
Art doesn’t just focus on individual success but also showcases the importance of teamwork and how valuable collaborating with other people, it can also help artists improve on their art skills. Getting good feedback is important in order for an artist to get better, Guzman believes in that too, “Yeah, I mean being able to see your work from different points of view, it helps you see things you didn’t see before, and especially from people that are maybe more technical or more practical, they’ll be able to see things and help you out with [whether it’s] composition or colors. And it’s very emotionally and physically supportive.”
Getting from start to end is not always easy though, just getting started can be difficult because coming up with an idea is hard to do right on the spot. However, Jantz has a way to help her out, “When I’m struggling to come up with something for a project, I tend to just start sketching and I look online for inspiration for either the type of art I want to make or different subjects that I would want to create…” Thorpe also echoes of what Jantz says, “it’s stressful at times, sometimes you just don’t know what to make, you have an idea and you don’t know how to make it or that kind of thing.”
While it may come as a struggle for some, to others they see it as an opportunity. For Thorpe, the thing he enjoys most about art is “Probably making the ideas because it’s just very creative and there’s a lot of potential for what the project could end up as.” Guzman also shares the same thing since ”I start with a ton of ideas, it (just) comes together.” The beginning can be enjoyable but how does the ending compare when it’s all said and done? Are artists truely satisfied with their work?
For Jantz she believes that there is some work that still lies ahead, “I think definitely any artist would looking back on the art that they’ve created in the past, there’s always the chance for improvement…”, Guzman also shares the same perspective where “I always feel like I can do better after finishing any of my projects…” However she also believes that “it’s definitely a mindset thing. If I spend too long working on something, it’s like I gain a perspective that it’s never good enough, or I can only see the mistakes I made. But after a year or two, I’ll look back on it and it’s perfectly fine. It’s just at the time, you can only criticize yourself instead of being proud of what you’ve done.”
Jantz adds onto that where “it comes to a point where you kind of have to have closure on each project that you create and be proud of what you did, even if it maybe not (have) been what you might want it to be.”
Art is more than just making doodles, it’s a way for students to get creative and show off their skills in different ways and by working together they can create something meaningful. Art is a way where a student can let their imagination run wild and express themselves, to Jantz “it’s my biggest, one of my biggest passions, because I feel like it’s something that I’m good at and I’m able to really portray how I feel through my art, which is very important to me. I think that getting to express myself through a different medium than say, words or actions is really cool because it’s very visual and everyone can enjoy it and see it and really see the work that I put into it.”
