What is the worst way to die? Maybe it is burning alive, feeling hot flames eating at your skin, or perhaps drowning–struggling in a limitless ocean, inhaling and feeling only water fill your lungs. Each of these terrifying deaths and many more have a place in OVS Senior Elsa Feng’s AP Art portfolio.
For the AP Art portfolio, the student must submit 15 artworks in a single concentration. Elsa decided on the theme “Different ways to die.” She builds upright foam coffins around one foot tall and depicts various death scenes in each coffin, layering fabrics, paper, clay, and acrylic paints.
“So far I’ve done ‘Burn in Fire’ and ‘Drown in Water,’” she said. “I felt like these two topics I’ve done are… the most painful ways to die, so I’m starting with these two.”
Her favorite piece is “Burn in Fire,” depicting an air-dry clay body screaming out in pain, inside a coffin filled with paper flames. “It is suffering in the fire, like I can feel it. I can feel the pain. So I really like that piece.”
Elsa is currently working on “Jumping off from a Tall Building” and is considering “Overdose” as a future piece.
Chia Hersk, the OVS fine arts teacher, oversees Elsa’s portfolio. “I never know what she’s going to come up with,” she said.
But why did Elsa pick such a macabre theme?
“I think it sounds really unique to me,” she explained. “I don’t feel like I’m a really dark person, and I want to… try something that’s really dark and see how it turns out.”
This is the second year Elsa is taking AP Art. Last year, she submitted an AP 3-D Art and Design on “Trash Fashion,” where she took food packaging and created elaborate dresses out of them.
For Elsa, art can feel therapeutic. “I feel like while I’m doing art, I’m fully paying attention to my art piece, and I can actually enjoy the time being alone and paying attention to something I like,” she said.