When junior Gloria Wu watched the newly released “Spiderman: Across the Spider-Verse,” she, like many others, was drawn to its dynamic and artistic animation. The highly-stylized visuals of the film stuck with her so much that when it came time to choose a subject for her own art project, she chose the guitar featured in the film.
Wu created the guitar during her time at the PAVAN Regional Governor’s School for the Arts, a rigorous program for students to develop their skills in visual, performing, and musical arts. Approximately 30 students from northern Virginia are invited to participate each year.
“It’s really fun and you get to meet a lot of like minded people that are peers,” Wu said. “The instructors are really kind and it’s really engaging.”
Students in the PAVAN program are first introduced to a variety of mediums to explore, “widening the range of work you could do,” Wu said. They then spend their time working on a final project to be presented at the end of the program.
Wu constructed the form of the guitar from materials such as cardboard and styrofoam, capturing the “punk” and abstract style of the instrument. “At the time, the new Spiderman movie had just come out,” Wu said. “So I made Hobie’s guitar. It was really cool.”
Students in the PAVAN program are first introduced to a variety of mediums to explore, “widening the range of work you could do,” Wu said. They then spend their time working on a final project to be presented at the end of the program, for which Wu chose to create the guitar.
Wu is also in the process of applying to the Residential Governor’s School for Visual Art for the upcoming summer. State governor’s schools are prestigious, four-week programs hosted at various Virginia colleges that provide opportunities for students to study their interests at a deeper level with experienced professors and instructors. Like PAVAN, the residential visual art governor’s school is hosted alongside the performing arts programs, allowing students to engage with others with different and sometimes overlapping interests.
Wu sees these kinds of programs as engaging and welcoming opportunities for students. “They’re very open to artists and different styles and I would definitely recommend other younger artists in our school or county to try out the programs,” she said.
As part of the application process, students submit samples of their portfolio for consideration. Wu submitted a piece she refers to as “Rainy Street” in her application to the upcoming residential governor’s school.
“It’s a piece I drew from when I went to China and I really just like the atmosphere of the picture,” Wu said. “It was bright colors and the street life and it was rainy. It’s just overall one of my favorite pieces so far.”
Wu frequently draws inspiration from her travels. She looks to her camera roll for ideas, she said, to “draw something that’s memorable to me.”
Instead of making art with any particular audience or message in mind, Wu chooses to create something simply because she likes it. “But art can have a message no matter what, it really just depends on how you’re looking at it.”
Wu also finds inspiration from drawing celebrities. One of her favorite muses is a singer from a K-pop group called ZEROBASEONE.
“I really like drawing portraits of celebrities or people I find attractive on Pinterest or something,” Wu said. “I just doodle a lot.”
“She is always drawing or sketching or making art,” art teacher Stephanie Woshner said. “She specializes in painted portraits but also dabbles in other areas like figure drawing. She stands out because she is not afraid to tackle difficult subjects like portraits and the human figure.”
Wu’s preferred medium is acrylic paint. Her style has been described by peers as very realistic, and the bright colors and lifelike style of her own work reflects some of her favorite artists, such as comic artist Dan Mora and painter JC Leyendecker. “I love the way he paints,” Wu said. “It’s very graphic but also it’s in a realistic way. It just looks really amazing.”
Woshner described Wu’s “unique” and “painterly” style in a similar way. “Gloria has a very expressive style that is layered with lots of brushwork and mark making.”
With schoolwork and other activities, Wu doesn’t have time to draw every day, but when she does, she spends a couple of hours on it. She likes to follow tutorials to learn new techniques because “you can find what spots you make mistakes in a lot easier.”
Wu appreciates her art classes for the fundamentals they’ve taught her and the feedback she’s received. “It really taught me the basics and really set the ground for me to make more things that are continuously getting better and better as I grow as an artist.”
Wu started in Art 1 last year as a sophomore, but has advanced to Art 3 as a junior this year. “I saw in her great potential and a strong artistic voice,” Woshner said.
Wu has seen great improvement in her art since she started drawing seriously in middle school, especially in her proportions and figure drawing. “It’s just easier for me to draw those things that I thought were hard before.”
Woshner has also seen Wu’s growth over the last couple years. “She has become a more confident artist, challenging herself with new and different media and subject matter while continuing to strengthen her own unique and individual style as a portrait painter.”
Wu hopes to study art in college and make a career out of it. She currently gifts some of her art to family and friends, but hopes to start selling it.
“I want to have people look at it and enjoy my art, but I also want to make money with it, too,” she said. “Hopefully it’s in some sort of gallery or I could display it somewhere.”
