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As the year comes to an end, many seniors find themselves reflecting upon their time spent at Dreyfoos. Whether they entered the school as a freshman or even in their upperclassmen years, each individual’s art has developed while they were here. On April 1, the visual and digital departments hosted the 4×4 Show in order to present their senior’s development, and give the students an outlet to express what their Dreyfoos experience meant to them.
Visual senior Dan Mitrovic examines an interactive piece in the 4×4 art show on April 1.
“I came up with the idea about a week before spring break,” visual dean Lacey Van Reeth said. “We’ve never done something like this before, we called it the 4×4 Show because the four represents the student’s four years of high school. I think that the students managed to successfully represent themselves in the work.”
The students were told about the show shortly before spring break begun, and the work was extremely varied; many decided to make self-portraits with different mediums. Students experimented with digital art, painting, interactive pieces, and even produced 3-D art.
An example of a 3-D portrait in the gallery done by visual senior Isabella Montoya.
“I think this show is really cool because seniors can really show off a lot of stuff they may not experiment with for other projects,” digital media junior Julie Canales said. “I’m personally really looking forward to doing it next year, it’s an interesting way to send the seniors off.”
Although the show was meant primarily for self-portraits, some students took a more conceptual approach to the task. Some made their designs fantastical, implementing their style to capture their personalities in contrastive ways. For example, visual senior Dani Rappel made a portrait of herself, but her skin was burned and gore was a large aspect of the piece.
“Mine ended being kind of morbid,” Rappel said. “I wanted it to represent what senior year is like, so I used the gruesomeness of the burns to represent stress.”
Visual senior Annie Fong scans the walls of the building 9 art gallery, looking at the individual senior portraits.
Other seniors used the show to represent their interests, which they felt would best showcase their personalities, and how they have become more assured in their work.
“When I came into this school I really liked cartoons, and I’ve always had a huge interest in space and oceans, so I wanted to incorporate that,” visual senior Katherine McCann said. “My time at Dreyfoos, I think has been a journey to finding myself through my art and becoming more confident.”
