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WHEN two classmates decided to put their artwork on show, the title of the exhibition was easy … Three is a crowd!
The dynamic duo decided that a pair could prove perfect and attract a crowd to the display at St Christopher’s Senior School in Isa Town.
The exhibition showcased paintings, sculpture, installation art and photographs by Allisa Lee, 17, and Emily Hunt, 18, as part of their International Baccalaureate diploma programme (IB). The course allowed the artists to explore different subjects that stemmed out of the themes, ‘Me, Myself and I’ and ‘Distortion and Deformity’.
Allisa, from Mahooz, is an American from Hawaii who joined the school at the beginning of the course, two years ago. With her five siblings – Annika, Aleksi, Anders, Amalia and Avi – as her subjects, she attempted to portray their individual personalities through her paintings and photo imagery – a digital art form whereby the image is hand-drawn on a graphics tablet and completed using photo-editing software.
She said: “The theme gave me lot of freedom and I could look into anything that I thought could describe me, or a part of something that is important to me.
“I grew up with a houseful of siblings who are all very different. I love them dearly and I believe they have really shaped me as I have grown up. Using them as subjects I was looking at what makes up a person as they mature ... whether it is movies, music or the culture surrounding you.
“Art has brought a lot of creativity into my life and although it takes a lot of time and effort, I think it is a great fun thing to do between studying for other subjects. I also love the fact that I can go anywhere with it and explore areas that are very different while keeping to a theme.”
Allisa also made sculptures of a human skull that she said helped her understand portraiture and the anatomy behind a face. She is planning to major in English Literature and to also study art as her minor subject at Princeton University in the US.
On the other hand, her only other IB classmate focusing on the subject of art, Emily Hunt, from A’Ali, who is a biology student, explored her personal experience of surgery to overcome scoliosis and back problems with an in-depth study of the human spine with a series of paintings and a sculpture of the spine.
Passionate about photography she has also successfully shown some of her portrait shots and still photography alongside its adaptations through paintings.
Emily said: “I had scoliosis, which is a curvature of the spine, and I had corrective surgery as a teenager. It was a really important time for me and I drew inspiration from that and I never ran out of inspiration because there are always different ways and different routes to travel with the subject.
“Art at St Chris has helped me to figure out what I wanted to do in future. I hope to pursue photography at Sunderland University in the UK.”
Proud of the pair’s achievements, Joe Mulleague, art teacher at St Christopher’s School, said: “They were both very responsive and single-minded in a healthy way. They have explored so many different materials and have tried so many different things.
“It is a five-term course and I think there is a sense of journey in the work they have done. They also do investigation workbooks which contains a lot of critical investigation.
“The numbers of students who do Art in IB are quite small. Many students are attracted to sciences and want to concentrate on medicine and engineering although this course is a joy to experience and teach.”
The art students now await examination results which will be marked by an external examiner who also carries out a personal interview with them.
