The faces of local art

Antioch Community High School is home to a symphony of artists who paint the halls and decorate the ceilings. Artists make ACHS a community space suitable to the unique identity of its students. 

Creativity at ACHS comes in many forms, including students participating in band, orchestra, choir, musical composition, creative writing, all forms of Sequoit Media, 3D Art, photography, acting, stagecraft, speech, many clubs and, of course, 2D art.

Sophomore Morgan Vogt, a 2D Intro to Art student and up-and-coming painter, feels she is defined by art. She is a prominent member of the art club, and though it is her first year in an art class at ACHS, Vogt hopes she will rise to an AP art class next year.

For an artist, style is often as defining as a name. Junior Noen Sorensen is an AP art student who primarily makes abstract collages. Sorensen is a notable artist who uses their style to translate emotions and tell a story in their paintings; the abstractness forces viewers to analyze each element of a collage and dissect its meaning. 

“I like when [art] evokes feelings when you look at it, and you can dissect everything about it; I feel like a lot of my art has to do with development, childhood and how everybody comes from a different perspective of life,” Sorensen said. “Everybody’s art is going to look different.”

Self-expression is the lifeblood of art and fits each artist differently. Junior Sasha Lotz, whose art primarily consists of colored pencil pieces with a recent interest in paintings, is another prominent ACHS artist.

“I think teenagers can express a high school experience better than grownups and people outside a high school—what we go through, what our lives and the world are like,” Lotz said. “It is difficult to achieve that when you are older.”

Perhaps one of Antioch’s most stylistically diverse artists is sophomore Annabelle Gussarson, an Intro to Art student specializing in painting, drawing and crocheting and is a member of the stage crew. Gussarson uses art as a medium to express the complexities of mental health in an art therapy fashion. 

“The thing I like about art is it helps you understand what happened in your past and uncover trauma in a sense,” Gussarson said. “These memories are stuck with you, and you can use art to understand them and get them out of your mind onto a canvas.”

Many artists, including Gussarson, use art as a way to express complicated feelings that are more easily explained with images than words. 

Art is arguably the definer of culture, and therefore the artists of ACHS are weaving a tapestry that projects the identity of the student body.