With her head down, eyes focused solely on the canvas in front of her, senior Logan Mims captures what she has envisioned, focusing on incorporating meaning with every brushstroke.
Mims is an artist who has taken many art classes throughout her years at the high school, including her current elective, AP Art and Design, where she creates watercolor, collages, oil paintings and more. While she isn’t able to find much time outside of class to create art, she is still driven to constantly improve her work and experiment with different mediums.
Mims said she got into drawing during the pandemic and worked independently until she was able to join art classes at the high school. She tried to focus on improving her artwork by learning from others online.
“I had so much free time, so I started drawing and looking at videos on how to improve at anatomy, as well as other forms of drawing. The passion just took off from there, and I kept drawing everyday,” Mims said.
In one of Mims’ pieces depicting a child running through an art museum, AP Art and Design teacher Elizabeth Brennan said Mims specifically included doors, hallways and windows as a metaphor for the journey that the girl in the painting will need to undertake. Brennan said she admires how much thought Mims puts into her artwork.
“It was only after reading something that she wrote about her artwork that I saw how deep the meaning was in her work,” Brennan said. “It was really beautiful.”
Visual arts teacher Eric Latimer taught Mims in three classes, including Digital Storytelling, a class only offered during the 2020-21 school year which was her first introduction to digital art. Latimer said that he was able to see her dedication to art and progress.
“She not only satisfied the expectations [of the class] but made a conscious effort to be a better artist than she was when she started. I think she was hungry to improve; she really had drive,” Latimer said.
AP Art and Design students are required to come up with a question that they will explore and investigate for the course of the year. Brennan said Mims chose a question centered around how humans and nature often share similar qualities.
“She started out sort of as an appreciation of nature, but because she’s really into art, she’s gradually had it change and develop over time, which is exactly what a student should be doing in an AP class,” Brennan said.
Latimer said he thinks Mims is a talented artist who incorporates sentimental concepts into her work, which shows the thought and commitment in her art. He also said he appreciates her work ethic and ability to focus in class.
“She’s a great visual thinker and has a good sense of color. [My] overall impression was that she was serious, dedicated, hardworking and a big fan and a big lover of the arts,” Latimer said.
While reflecting on herself and her journey with art, Mims said she advises other artists to acknowledge that they are constantly going to improve if they put in the effort and that they need to recognize that progress isn’t always a steady incline.
“Keep looking back at your past work because you’re always going to see improvement with each day that goes by,” Mims said. “A lot of things aren’t going to turn out the way that you envisioned, but it’s all a part of the process and you’re going to make a piece that’s so good one day.”
