Bonita Vista High (BVH) flourishes with opportunities for students to create creative styles of art. Advanced Placement (AP) 2D art and design and Career Technical Education (CTE) digital photography teacher, Edwin Lim encourages his students to participate in contests to give their artwork recognition. Senior Junalene Nunez, a student who partakes in Lims AP 2D art and design class shares what the Scholastic Art and Writing (SAWA) contest she partook in is.
“The Scholastic Art and Writing (SAWA) contest is an art contest for many different artists and artwork. [There was] writing, poetry, digital or traditional art and many others. Since there are many different categories I essentially applied for the one that I could do in the least amount of time,” Nunez said.
Several BVH students like Nunez participated in the SAWA contest as entering contests is a common occurrence for Lims students. Lim consistently provides students with information for upcoming contests and explains his hopes of preparing and encouraging students to showcase their artwork. Junior Olivia Gutierrez who partakes in Lims AP 2D art and design class, shares what the process was like as she applied for SAWA.
“Lim informs his students when there is an upcoming contest and gives us the choice to decide which of our photos and art have a chance of winning a contest. We submit our work whether it is a photo or drawing of some sort to the contest following up with a writer’s statement. The writer’s statement gives context on our photos or art and why it is important to us,” Gutierrez said.
What makes students like Nunez and Gutierrez stand out from the contest was Nunez winning first place in her category, which was an editorial cartoon and Gutierrez getting an honorable mention from the photography category. Nunez shares that her drawing was different from the other students in her category because it was based on anti-trans bills. Nunez, who is heavily inspired by this topic, drew what she thinks would be an entertaining cartoon that judges would enjoy.
“The artwork that I made for the editorial cartoon was based on the different anti-trans bills that were passed in each state and what I created was this image of a jail cell where there were two people inside of it, one was a real criminal and the other one was transgender. The joke was to make an editorial cartoon that was funny to the audience which was someone in jail for no reason and another one who should actually be in jail. I wanted it to show how stupid it was to see people who are discovering themselves as bad as someone who is actually a criminal,” Nunez said.
Lim shares his opinion on Nunez’s editorial cartoon as he felt that it was a good outlook for a student to express their love for a topic and execute a cartoon like Nunez did. He added that when being affiliated with art, being content with your artwork will make you successful.
“My first rule about art is that you have to pick a topic that you care about and Nunez picked LGBTQ+ issues, the persecution of the LGBTQ+ population. We live in the state of California where we are able to speak out about this and be respected by the school community, so she did this wonderful thing. It makes me happy to see that she had gone through with the topic because she cared so much for it. Art is only successful if you are happy with the outcome,” Lim said.
Not only does art come in the form of illustration, it can also be photography. Students like Guiterrez had submitted a different approach than a drawing, she submitted a photograph she had taken. Her photograph encapsulates an image of a deer in the woods staring directly at the camera. She expresses that the photo might have been looked at upon the judges with a positive outlook because of the difficulty it was to take.
“Instead of doing art, I submitted a photo that I had taken which was of a deer in the woods where the deer was looking straight at the camera. I think that the judges liked the photo I took because it might have been different from every other photo in my category as it was in the woods and because getting a picture of an animal looking at the camera is difficult to execute, especially wild animals,” Guiterrez said.
Students in Lims AP 2D art and design class strive to make their artwork the best that it can be, especially with the encouragement from Lim. Lim believes that being successful is going above and beyond and picking something that you love creating artwork that his students enjoy will allow them to improve. Having students like Nunez and Guiterrez participate in contests like SAWA gives them an opportunity for success.
“I always ask [my students] how much effort they are putting into my class and making sure they are putting 100 percent in. Success is about details and going above and beyond, so it’s the same way for art. Pick something that you love and execute it, create your masterpiece. I want my students to believe in the dna coralevel that they are equal to any school, success is the only way,” Lim said.
