ROOTED IN LOVE

The Attitudinal Healing Connection, Inc. presents:

ArtEsteem’s 25th Annual Exhibition

Reflections of Me and My World 2023

Rooted In Love

The ArtEsteem Exhibition returned to Studio One Art Center for our 25th year of celebrating Oakland youth’s creative expression. This school year, each student—from Digital Media, to Cultural Arts, to Visual Arts—shared profound artwork and stories that reflect their unique perspective of our world, its issues, and its bright points. Thank you to our dedicated team of ArtEsteem staff and student + community volunteers for making this happen!

SHOP: THE ‘WOMS LIVING’ COLLECTION

Snapshots from the exhibition event on Saturday May 6th.

EXPLORE: EXHIBITION PLAYLIST

Allendale Elementary. Aspire Lionel Wilson Preparatory Academy. Bret Harte Middle School. Community School for Creative Education. Emery High. Hoover Elementary. Life Academy. Met West High School. Oakland Emiliano Zapata Street Academy. Ralph Bunche High School. West Oakland Middle School.

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Allendale Elementary. Aspire Lionel Wilson Preparatory Academy. Bret Harte Middle School. Community School for Creative Education. Emery High. Hoover Elementary. Life Academy. Met West High School. Oakland Emiliano Zapata Street Academy. Ralph Bunche High School. West Oakland Middle School. / /

JD Mathieu’s Class

Emiliano Zapata Street Academy High School | 9th-12th Grade

Socio-Cypher (2023)

The idea behind the Socio-Cypher is not a brand new one. Sitting in a circle of peers while expressing thoughts and feelings probably goes back as far as language itself. The Street Academy Socio-Cypher is intended to give the students a voice–not through visual arts or prose–in their most raw and purest form: uncensored. This seven minute mini-documentary asks the students to answer a few questions about community and offers some insight into their perspectives on the topics. Half of the students were given the questions in advance, whereas the other half saw them for the first time on the day of filming.

Milo Davis’s Class

Bret Harte Middle School | 8th Grade

Faces (2023)

Bret Harte animation students started learning basic animation principles such as slow in and slow out, squash and stretch, exaggeration, timing, and staging by creating several flipbooks and exercises. The initial flipbooks consisted of the bouncing ball, waving hand, and character bounce. These are the fundamentals that professional studio animators use on a day-to-day basis. When we started the Faces project, students were tasked with imagining eight or more faces with different expressions, facial features, and props. Students began to create flipbooks of these faces transitioning into one another. Students could put their emotions and feelings into their artwork through this project. They applied slow-in and slow-out exaggeration, squash, and stretch, which they had learned previously, to make these animations as smooth and fluid as possible. Animation is a time-consuming medium, and students learned it takes much effort and work to create strong animation. They could work for a week and only be able to draw a few frames of animation, which at times can be disheartening, but seeing the result of their labor in the Faces project made them feel accomplished and proved that their work was worthwhile.