My Senior Ventures Project, titled The Heart of Art, is purposed to bring more art to Darlington. I have always been passionate about the arts, and I am planning to pursue art as a career. My goal was to create two mixed-media open submission art galleries and also host an art market in the spring. I believe that there needs to be more opportunities in the Darlington community for creatives to expand and share their different fine arts talents. I had noticed that the art galleries at Darlington were only specifically for art class students, and stuck to one specific theme, so I wanted to try something that would expand on that and also display these pieces in a more popular area where students socialize.
So far, I’ve hosted a successful art gallery in December. There was an opening event in the evening with food to enjoy and more than 50 diverse artworks. The gallery combined pieces of photography, paintings, wire works, pencil, cyanotypes, and many more. Through the planning and execution, I learned how to organize properly, plan, create good advertisements, and budget appropriately. I’ve always been a procrastinator, and I had never planned an event before, so the day before the art gallery was the most stressful day I have ever experienced. Last minute, I was running around the school trying to make prints for the art, grouping of art pieces, and making a sign the night before the gallery. With the help of faculty and peers, everything ended up working out for good, and I learned how to do better for the next gallery.
For my next gallery, which I am currently working on, I wanted it to have a more specific theme, so I titled it Faces and Flowers. I wanted the theme to be faces and flowers because I was inspired by spring flowers and the vibrant colors of spring. Also, for later in the spring, I plan to set up an art market at Darlington for students to sell their art.
I feel that it is important for artists to know that they are important, noticed, and appreciated. With my project titled Heart of Art, I am building Darlington’s heart and love for art within the community.
Senior Ventures is a year-long academic program built on a framework of leadership, innovation and community engagement. Through a proven self-guided exploratory process, seniors whose proposals are selected for this program work independently to develop a project that’s interdisciplinary in scope and is connective, performance-based, investigative, or entrepreneurial. Click here to learn more.
