The College Board chose Timber Creek alumna Gracie Baker’s artwork to be featured in the 2020 AP Art and Design Digital Exhibit. The exhibit features 51 international high school artists and many different mediums of art. Over 62,000 portfolios were reviewed to select the artwork for the exhibit, making the selection process highly competitive.
Baker’s drawing, entitled Sloth, is part of a larger portfolio submitted for her AP Drawing course. The portfolio is themed around Baker’s experience in the beginning of quarantine and the emotions that came with it.
“I had completely trashed my portfolio a month before it was due,” Baker said. “Every painting that I had made before that, I decided that I didn’t want to do anymore, and I came up with a theme for my portfolio that had to do with COVID and quarantine and stuff. All of the drawings and paintings that I made were from the month when we were in school but we were quarantined. They’re all revolving around the emotions and the habits that people were dealing with in quarantine.”
Sloth features Baker in her bedroom with dirty clothes, dishes, and visual evidence of online schooling strewn about the floor. Baker herself is overgrown and caricatured to show how she felt stuck in her room. The piece was originally titled Prom.
“It’s a self portrait. I drew my prom dress, and it has a little tag on it that says prom, and I’m like too big for it and it’s little itty-bitty and there’s trash and stuff. That one was called prom because I didn’t get to have senior prom,” Baker said.
According to Baker, Sloth was not the piece in her portfolio she was expecting to receive accolades. Her portfolio also included a self portrait of her screaming face wearing a flaming graduation cap.
“That one, if I had guessed before I had opened the link to see which one they picked, I would have thought it was that one. That one I was really proud of. I spent like fourteen hours on it and it was super hyper realistic,” Baker said. Although less time went into Sloth, Baker still sees why it was chosen. “Even though it’s less realism, it encompasses how everyone feels in quarantine pretty well. So, I think that’s probably why it was picked. Plus, it was fun to make and you can tell I had fun with it.”
Baker expressed her gratitude for the honor of getting into the exhibit despite the decision coming too late to put on any college applications.
“It was pretty cool. It almost feels a little bit like ‘what do I do with this’ because I’m already in college so I don’t really have anything to put this achievement on but it was still very nice to be recognized.”
See Sloth and read more information on the inspiration behind the piece here.