For advanced art students at Pavilion High School, art is about more than just paint on a canvas or film in a camera; it’s a form of expression—of emotions, ideas, and creativity.
At the school’s AP Art Showcase, held at the Yard of Ale in Piffard, six of Pavilion’s AP Art students had the chance to present their work to the public.
Emily Vattimo, Lilaith Spencer, Anna Chen, Logan DioGuardi, Norah Manurung, and Hayden Kramer shared pieces they’ve created not only in class but also throughout their budding careers as artists.
For young artists like Hayden Kramer, being an artist means stepping outside of one’s comfort zone and embracing trial and error.
“I’ve worked with acrylic paint and things in the studio, but not to the level that I did this year,” Kramer said. “It was a lot of ‘I have no idea what I’m doing,’ throwing things at the wall to see if they stick, and just trial and error. Really figuring out what’s going to work.”
As part of her exhibit, Kramer even experimented with painting using actual frosting when depicting strawberry shortcake. Some attempts, like crochet portraits, were less successful, but for Kramer, the value lies in the creative journey itself.
Logan DioGuardi, also a senior at Pavilion, uses another medium to express himself: photography.
“I was working in different ways to show motion and emotion,” DioGuardi said about his photo process.
Working with everything from film to various lenses, DioGuardi showcased the many ways photography can capture both rare and everyday moments.
Some students used multiple pieces to tell a story, building a narrative timeline. One of these students was Emily Vattimo. Using both digital tools and traditional paint, Vattimo created a sequence of artwork that followed a story.
“It’s about death, and then becoming a person again,” Vattimo explained about the chronology of her work. “Here, she’s coming back to life, looking in the mirror and having a who you might have once been kind of a thing.”
The AP Art course is more than just a class—it’s a yearlong journey where students build a cohesive portfolio that reflects their creative process and personal growth. For many, the showcase represents the culmination of months of experimentation, development, and self-discovery.
For some students, AP Art is more than an academic requirement—it’s a stepping stone to something bigger. For Hayden Kramer, that next step is attending the Rochester Institute of Technology to study illustration.
“I took a pre-college portfolio class there over the summer for two weeks,” Kramer said. “Being there and being with other people, I was like ‘this is really what I want to do with my life.’”
Photos by Camryn Brookhart
