Senior Sofia Terry has painted equations, planets, and windows, among other seemingly random objects, to make FHC hallways a bit brighter.
As a sophomore, Sofia began attending FHC’s art club meetings and, by the end of her junior year, became one of the presidents of the group. Initially, the Art Club was a group of students who worked on individual projects in each others’ company in the school’s art department. However, within the past few years, the club has been focusing on creating collaborative murals around the school.
Benefitting Sofia, the club’s recent focus has been on par with the type of art she enjoys creating.
“Murals are definitely my favorite type of art to create because they’re on a very large scale,” Sofia said. “I don’t have to go as into detail and be as precise as [in] other artworks.”
Although the around-school artwork of the art club is a relatively recent endeavor, the members have made significant progress around the high school. So far, the club has completed the mural in front of both physics teacher Amy Stone’s and broadcasting teacher Jeff Mander’s classrooms and is currently working on the “Windows” mural in the media center.
The Windows mural wasn’t initially a project that the Art Club was creating; however, when a former FHC student began the mural but could no longer complete it, the group agreed to take up the project.
“We weren’t planning on doing [the Windows] mural,” Sofia said. “[The Art Club] decided to take it over and finish it for [the student who could no longer complete the project]. We thought it was a good idea because we wanted to make the library more colorful.”
Even though the piece was not intended to be a mural painted by numerous students, it became a piece created by various artists after the Art Club acquired the work. This aligned with the club’s current focus on group projects, in contrast to the individual projects that had previously characterized the club.
“[I’m most proud of] the rainbow mural in the library,” Sofia said. “It is my favorite [mural] so far because we all worked on it together and collaborated; the other two murals were done separately.”
Before taking up the impromptu library work, the Art Club had attempted to find places for possible murals by surveying the school and scouting out locations that could use extra color. In addition, they asked around to see if any teachers at the school wanted a mural in or outside of their classrooms.
Thus, the astrological mural outside Stone’s physics classroom came about.
“I worked on the mural for Stone’s room all sophomore year and I’m so proud of it because I think it is so detailed but kind of realistic,” Sofia said. “I really love walking by it in the hallways and seeing it every day. It’s a space mural because space is Stone’s passion; she loves astronomy. She wanted a mural that represented her, so we included her favorite equations and favorite planets.”
In the future, the Art Club plans to paint more murals across many of the empty walls of FHC. They have looked into painting in the Senior Staircase area because of the vast abundance of space on the three towering walls. Nonetheless, for the moment, the club is focusing on its ongoing creation of the library painting.
Outside of solely the art club, Sofia has explored her interest in art by taking various art classes at the school, including Drawing and Painting and Clay and Sculpture.
“I really have enjoyed the [school’s art] classes, and I wish I had more time in my schedule to fit more art classes in,” Sofia said. “[I took] drawing and painting during COVID [and it] was really tough because we had to transfer our art to and from school during hybrid learning. If I could, I would retake the class and do it in person because I think that I would have a better experience.”
Even though, at the moment, Sofia is not technically enrolled in any art classes, she is able to express her creative skills through the Advanced Architecture class that FHC offers.
“Right now, I am enrolled in advanced architecture, which isn’t technically an art class, but in its own way it has a lot of artistic sides to it,” Sofia said. “[For my final project], I’m making an animal rescue online [which] is fully in color and 3D on the computer. It is kind of artistic in its own way.”
Away from school, Sofia enjoys painting, sewing gifts for family and friends, and joining her father, a professional glass blower, in his workshop to make small marbles for fun.
However, out of the numerous forms of art she makes, Sofia’s favorite remains murals. Although she has considered creating some of her own for local businesses in the past, she will continue to assist FHC’s art club and its endeavors to make the school more decorative for the moment.
Even more than merely creating unique large-scale works of art for the school, Sofia values the people whom she has been able to paint murals with.
“[My favorite thing about the Art Club] is all the people who come and support and all of the members because they’re all so different,” Sofia said. “I love meeting new people and talking [with them because] everyone has their own creative ideas. It’s so nice to collaborate with other people when [the project] is not for a grade, is something that everyone chooses to do, and is really passionate about.”
