Luke Perrotta

Whenever I'm labeled as an artist, I feel sort of guilty, like I cheated to earn the name. It's a stupid thing to think, and it's also why so many people dismiss the word art whenever they hear it—isn't art that impractical, hard, labor-intensive thing that's only made by people who learned to hold a pencil before they could crawl? Isn't it that thing that's made to do nothing more than look pretty and take up space? 

No. 

To believe any of that isn't just wrong—it's seriously behind the times. I was never as talented as the other students who were in AP Art, but that doesn't matter. That's not because "the art room is a respectful workspace" or because "we appreciate everyone's work"—in fact, the bar is and always has been very high—it's because modern art is nothing like many people's conception of it. Art is in everything: all forms of media, advertising and the corporate world, technology, whatever you can think of. 

This is an exceedingly vague and easy claim to make, but I really believe it because AP Art taught me more powerfully than anything else ever could. Visual art serves as the medium through which I can tell stories, whereas for other students in my class it's a vessel for architectural and technological design (or even philosophy). 

For me, it took an AP Art class environment to realize this. It took a class with a completely free environment and brutally high standards made me realize that art can really be a whole lot of things, as long as you're bold and hardworking enough to realize your ideas. 

I've been in AP Art for one year, and that year gave me the opportunity to do what I want to do—tell stories and get my ideas out with the aid of visual art. Art shaped my future, and I'm nowhere close to the only one, which is why the continuation of AP Art is so important to me. Even if I won't be here to directly feel the consequences, I would hate to see this same opportunity die for those younger (but often more talented) than I am. 

So the next time you hear about art, take a moment to think about what it might mean. It's probably not what you think.