Spotlight on Artist Jenifer Le

Welcome to The Elective’s digital art museum, dedicated to the incredible work of AP Arts students. Each week we highlight a work or series created in one of the AP Arts concentrations—AP 2-D Art and Design, 3-D Art and Design, and AP Drawing (the AP Program also offers Art History and Music Theory)—as well as a statement from the artist (and, occasionally, their teacher).

From the first cave paintings to contemporary breakthroughs in virtually reality, art, in all its forms, has been a crucial way for people to process, make sense of, comment on, and grapple with the world around them. In 2020, there is a lot to process and grapple with—and AP Art students have risen to the challenge. The work many of them submitted in their final portfolios is explicitly of the moment, from commentary on the covid-19 pandemic to the celebration of people of color to the nature of heroism in perilous times.

The work is often challenging and provocative but always insightful, inspiring, and expansive.

This week we feature an acrylic and ink on paper piece made by Jenifer Le from Lakota East High School in Liberty Township, Ohio.

Here’s Jenifer’s statement on the work:

“Whenever I went clothes shopping, I'd always slide my hand through the clothing racks and feel the different fabric and textures. I'd ask myself, 'How can I show the viewer the feeling of fabric and its beauty at the same time" through my art?'

For this piece, I wanted to try something different while maintaining my Sustained Investigation. I sketched out the figure and dotted the skin, then worked on the clothing and colored the hair. I shaded with dots and lines, painted flat colors, then painted stripes.

For other in my portfolio, I was inspired by Greek sculptures with clothing draped over their bodies in intricate detail. I wanted to replicate the same feeling of delicateness while also experimenting with different colors for shading.

Over time, I decided to include pieces that displayed texture instead of just figures in fabric. This was the year I really got into painting, as I mostly used colored pencils and markers to do art previously. I tried my hand at painting detailed clothing but decided to add in colored pencils on some pieces, as they helped bring them together with more features and create more depth.”

Here are a few more pieces from Jenifer’s portfolio:

Student statements are lightly edited for clarity.