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arts Creating Thoughtful Art Lessons of the Senior Art Portfolio A ldo Chavez ���10 never planned on going to art school. In fact, he is considering majoring in physics at Columbia University, where he started this fall. However, during his senior year at Latin, Aldo chose to take the extremely rigorous AP Studio Art course, which is geared toward supporting students as they prepare their art portfolio for college. ���I���ve been drawing my whole life, and when I started the college process, I thought a portfolio would be a good way to show colleges something about myself and what I do outside of class,��� Aldo explains. While his skill and passion for art may have set him apart from some other applicants, he can���t be certain how much of a role it played in his acceptance to Columbia. Yet, the experience of intense focus on his art allowed Aldo to stretch his abilities and ideas beyond his own expectations. The finished product was not what he had anticipated. It turned out to be something far more organic and natural than the rigid mathematically defined work he started with. Aldo���s is exactly the kind of experience and evolution that visual arts teacher Christine Holloway, who leads the AP Art Studio class, hopes for. ���Portfolios bring the students to a new way of thinking about making artwork,��� says Holloway. ���The experience moves them beyond focusing on one work at a time, to creating a series of pieces that inform one another. Successful students begin to understand how to have vision in what they create, and how to use their context (place and time in the world) as a part of their creative self-expression.��� Some of the unexpected results of Aldo Chavez��� year-long endeavor. 20 Latin Magazine