St. Joe Artist Spotlight: Sydney Hull
April 29, 2021
Sharp with her serves and volleys as a part of the St. Joe Girls’ Tennis team, Senior AP Art student, Sydney Hull, is just as precise when it comes to the detail work in her art. Within an AP Art class, students are tasked with creating a collection of pieces that address their SI (Sustained Investigation), equipped with their artistic talent and an assortment of supplies. Hull’s careful eye has been trained on illustrating her observations of women; “how [they] interact with things in their environment, especially [those] that alter their appearance, confidence, or self-identity.” and her art explores the question, “How have women disguised themselves throughout history to portray society’s ‘ideal woman’?” Hull takes the time to style and model herself in order to depict what she has observed, often in acrylics, colored pencils, or graphite pencils.
From photoshopping nowadays (Behind the Screens) to beauty magazines in the 70s (IDEAL Magazine Volume 1: 1976) , Hull’s creations provide distinct examples of how “women have hid themselves behind different societal expectations to appease society.” She personally defied expectations when it came to her favorite piece, “Shower Me With Jewels”, a large watercolor painting that utilizes gold leaf to make the jewelry that much more decadent.
When it comes to creating art, Hull advises to, “Have patience with making your art, practice with [unfamiliar] mediums, and make make sure to step away from your art once in a while and look at it from a distance because when it’s too close up to you, you will often pick out all the minuscule errors and spend too much time trying to fix those when no one else will notice them.”
