For senior and aspiring artist Sami Marcantonio, art isn’t just a hobby; it’s a way of life.
“It’s so versatile,” Marcantonio said. “Whether you are happy or sad or any emotion you are feeling, you can portray it through art.”
Marcantonio said what makes art amazing is that it can be created from any feeling and with any medium.
“It’s a privilege to have the ability to create art by second nature,” Marcantonio said. “You’re constantly falling and getting back up and through that I find parts of myself as a person and an artist that make me who I am.”
Marcantonio has been making art ever since she was little.
“I doodled on every napkin I ever got my hands on,” Marcantonio said.
She first realized that art could be more than just a hobby when she won a contest for the local newspaper. Ever since, Marcantonio has continued to love art and over the years, developed her own unique style.
Marcantonio has recently been asked by the main office to paint a mural for the school.
“Art is probably a direct reflection of me as a person,” Marcantonio said, “I find that it’s fulfilling just to be an artist or considered an artist”.
Marcantonio prefers drawing over the other styles of art she uses and believes that her best works are when she sketches with pencil.
“You cannot fail as an artist,” Marcantonio said. “That failure becomes another piece of art that hasn’t come to life yet.”
Marcantonio works on her art every day, both at school and at home. She has also recently started student teaching at LHS with Ms. Dyson.
“Doing art every day gives me the tools to be an all-around better person,” Marcantonio said. “My personality isn’t rambunctious or rebellious at all really, because I can do all that through art”.
Marcantonio said that her use of color depends on her mood and that if there is a message to her art it would be “to never be afraid to try something new and do what makes you happy.”
“I think a lot of the time we get lost in this era where all things move in unity and it’s desirable to be one of the crowd, a lost face among a thousand,” Marcantonio said. “I don’t want to be woven into that horrid part of society, but I also don’t want to be striving to be offbeat from everyone else.”
Marcantonio said she wants to create art that conveys an “in-between where I am simply myself.”
“Once I take to my medium all things around me disappear,” Marcantonio said, “Not always right away, but eventually I enter what I can only describe as a peaceful state of mind.”
Marcantonio said that when she is working on her art she feels a kind of euphoria or an escape from the world around her.
“The peaceful state of mind is my whole world and I would be horribly lost without it,” Marcantonio said.
Marcantonio has taken many classes during her time at LHS and both of her art teachers, Ms. Johnson and Ms. Dyson, spoke highly of Marcantonio’s talent and personality.
“She is a teenager who is full of life, full of ideas, and full of spirit,” Johnson said.
Dyson described Marcantonio as kind, talented, and capable of anything she wants to achieve.
“How could you not want to be friends with this girl?” Dyson said, “You can’t help but smile when Sami starts to laugh.
Marcantonio hopes to go to art school after graduation. In college she wants a double major in fine arts and environmental sciences and a minor in art history. After college Marcantonio would like to make a career out of art, possibly as a museum curator.
“When people think of me I think they associate me with art,” Marcantonio said, “I don’t know who I’d be without it.”
