The “Future Faces” Art Show is a showcase of the talented artists in grades 9-12 from the A.L.L. School (Worcester Public School on Woodland Street).

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“My overall message is that my family is what I love most. I used different colors in the faces. I also have a big tree were we all come together. I pick up the colors because the colors tell the moods for the people I live with.” - Danessa Pacheco (11th Grade)

Clark University has recently partnered with the A.L.L. School, and the student-teacher for the art class is Becca Herskovitz (Studio Art major as an undergraduate and current MAT student).

“My overall message with my portrait and poem is friendship. The bold words are the strongest words I feel in the piece because they are really important in keeping a friendship. There is a large face, which is myself, and there are two sets of faces which are myself and a really good friend. I used both warm and cool colors throughout the faces. Two big decisions I had to make were which style of writing to pick and find a way to make the poem fit the piece. Color was also a big decision because I didn’t want only one face stand out the most.” ~Christina Grandmaison (12th Grade)

“Future Faces” is a chance to get a preview of young people who will be making art and doing many great things in the future; however, it also honors them as artists in our community right now.

“My overall message with my portrait and poem is that karma rules over everything. I used variety in the color scheme and unity with the layout and positioning of the faces. I used both warm and cool colors in the faces. The two big decisions I had to make when I was working on my portrait were the colors of the background and the color of the third face.” ~Casey Anderson (10th Grade)

The Self-Portraits were created over a long period of time with many different steps.

“The overall message of the piece is that there are many different sides to Carlos and I’m not always the same. I used unity with some same faces. I used variety with different colors. I used warm colors on my two top faces and cool colors in my bottom faces. I had to decide where to place my faces. I had to decide which faces to use because I had more pictures.” ~Carlos Ramirez (12th Grade)

Students used Adobe Photoshop to alter photos of themselves. From there they traced the print-outs and projected these line drawings onto the larger paper. Students planned compositions for the faces, which would highlight the message they wanted to convey and also make the viewer’s eye move throughout the entire piece. Students thought about color choices a great deal, selecting colors that would reflect the mood of the faces that they were painting.
Students then engaged in writing their own poems by using words and phrases that they discovered in other poems and songs that they read. Many students used these “found poems” in their final pieces, while others wrote their own poems from scratch or used songs or poems they brought into class. Students then went through the process of selecting a font that would fit their poem and piece, as well as deciding how to integrate their writing with the faces.

“My overall message is that I want everyone to see how hard I worked on this and my ability at writing poems. The faces are different because of the sizes and the writing. I used warm colors in my hair and face on one of them and the cool colors on the other one.” ~Ashley Sykes (12th Grade)

“I really did not have an overall message for my portrait. In my portrait I used unity in the different blues. I used warm colors in my face and in the background. One big decision that I had to make was am I going to put words in the background. Another big decision I had to make is what color am I going to do the background.” ~Camille Hussey (9th Grade)

My overall message is being lost in pain in my piece. I emphasized the face with things that represent lost and pain. Two big decisions that I had to make were what to do with the background and what to do with the face. ~Almeen Hazard (11th Grade)

“The overall message is that I want people to know that I love basketball and basketball is my life. The picture looks a little sad because it tells people that even through my bad times I still love basketball and just thinking about basketball I’ll get through those bad times.” ~Alice Yawo (10th Grade)

“I wanted to show the audience who I am, and how I’m more then what people can see with their eyes. The ribbon unified all of my faces. I used cool colors in the background and warm colors in the faces, so my faces are being emphasized in my portrait. One of my challenges was deciding what my colors were going to be, and if I was going to add the ribbon or not. In the end…I was really happy with my piece.” ~Samantha Oliveras (10th grade)

Thus, the self-portraits are expressions of the artists through photography, paint, writing, and font-selection.