Westford Academy faculty members have selected student artwork to present in the annual art calendar. These art calendars will be sold at the Holiday Bazaar on December 7, 2024. This year, out of 50 entries submitted, 14 students had their pieces chosen for the calendar.
The winning students for the annual theme of “Things in Westford that are important to me” are sophomores Ryker Dang and Sherry Ye, juniors Alex Dunne, Charlene Kurnianto, Tobin Maus, Kaitlyn Pepin, and Addi Preble, and seniors Alyssa Duronio, Maggie Eckroth, Maddie Gault, Lexi Nolan, Madison Silvia, Rebecca Ward, and Faith Williams.
The voting process of the art calendar is done by the entire faculty and staff of WA, not just the art department. When evaluating the different pieces of art, the focus is more on how the artwork is executed rather than the subject matter itself.
“The execution of the artwork, including perspective, detail, and composition heavily influences voting. The process can be challenging for both teachers and students who feel their work did not make the cut,” art teacher Lisa Bolotte said. “I would just like to reiterate that there’s a lot of pressure to have your work selected. I think we, the [school] faculty, do a nice job of choosing ones that have been executed beautifully[…]and we do have to go along with [a] consensus for voting.”
Students in a full-year art course, including AP Art and Design were given 4 weeks to complete their drawing over the summer. Over the course of this time, many had different thought processes and ideas while creating their artwork, using their creativity to portray things that are meaningful to them as Westford students.
“The drawing I submitted for the 2024 art calendar focused on my personal artistic journey and experiences in Westford,” Kurnianto said. “Westford has inspired me to do so much more art when I moved here. Before, I didn’t take art classes, but when I moved to Westford, I was given that opportunity, and that kind of brought me to where I am.”
The school faculty that vote for these drawings tend to vote for artworks that capture a historic building in Westford. Dang worked his way around this preference by using an artistic perspective to capture the landscape of a lake, which won the calendar slot of September.
“I do not enjoy drawing buildings, because unless the architecture of the building is particularly grand[… ]perspective is a hard aspect of art to get right, and so is the texture of brick and wood planks. I made up for the ‘dull’ location in terms of artistic quality and detail in my art piece,” Dand said.
Ye had a different take of something important to her, commemorating her pet chickens in her drawing. Her artwork “My Apprehensive Chicken” won the calendar slot of October.
Ye’s drawing is significant to her, as it is a memorial to some of her chickens that were killed last month in a bear attack. She chose a reference photo prior to the attack, not including the deceased chickens. Ye says that if she could, she would go back and choose a different photo including them to make it a proper memorial.
Eckroth also shifted away from Westford history, and decided to capture the theme with her emotional perspective on senior graduation, with her drawing winning the calendar slot of June.
“I wanted to use my drawing to capture a moment in time that brings joy to so many students. While working on my drawing over the summer, I found this piece inspiring, since I [could] imagine throwing my cap at graduation the following year. I love how well I was able to capture all the different expressions of students at graduation,” Eckroth said.
Kurnianto has had her artwork win a place in the art calendar for two years in a row. In the 2024 art calendar, her “Blank Canvas” was a drawing highlighting her artistic journey was put as one of the back cover drawings.
Her most recent drawing,”Westford Academy Marching Band” was a drawing of the student marching band, which is the front cover of the 2025 art calendar. Kurnianto hopes that her work will inspire other students to participate in the art calendar and art show, emphasizing the importance of sharing and supporting each other in the art community.
Kurnianto claims that the marching band has always been a very cheerful and very welcoming community. She is happy to be able to portray the marching band in the art calendar because they’re always creative and outgoing with one another. Through her art, Kurnianto was able to express gratitude to everybody for supporting her throughout her artistic and musical journey.
“Art is the ability to be able to learn and express oneself […]But, it’s also the fact that you should be enjoying every second of it. While there is an underlying point of discipline to it, if you wish for your art to be displayed, draw what you love, and not just what you think the faculty will vote for,” Kurnianto said.
