Senior Crystal Zapata took her first art class at Niles North her freshman year. Now she is enrolled in AP art, a class that requires a lot of talent and dedication. Zapata demonstrates both. In AP art students are required to put together a portfolio. The concentration is a series of 12 pieces that are a supplement to the AP test. The other part of the AP portfolio is the breadth aspect, which is 12 pieces in any media that exemplify one’s understanding of the portfolio criteria.

“For my concentration, I wanted to explore the idea of distorting and deconstructing faces,” Zapata said of her work. “I aspired to successfully exemplify the psychology of human thought through the use of deconstructed facial features within geometric imagery. In creating pieces that show physically disarranged faces, I have portrayed nonsensical thinking and the concept of human thought in general.”

Her hard work has paid off. She has received a gold key for the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and first place in the drawing category at the LISA show at the Great Frame Up. She also received the Presidential Scholarship from Columbia College in Chicago for her portfolio and grades.

Senior Crystal Zapata has always been surrounded by art. Her mother is a graphic designer,who has influenced her passion for art.

“She has dozens of stock photography books that I rummage through for images to integrate into my collages and just for inspiration in general,” Zapata said.

Art is how Zapata expresses herself. She feels that, “Looking at art is an incredibly deep experience. It’s like peering into someone’s mind, and I find that to be a pretty beautiful thing.”

Despite her many accomplishments, Zapata remains modest.

“I was always interested in art, but I was pretty bad at it at first…actually I was pretty bad at art up until this year.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Check out more of Zapata’s work in the gallery under northstarnews.org’s Connect menu.