Emerson Chang has been our student for 6 years. She has received many awards for her work including Golden Keys for Scholastic Awards. We also helped Emerson prepare her AP portfolio, which earned a perfect top score of 5.

1. Identify the inquiry that guided your sustained investigation.

As a high school student, I often find myself preoccupied with academics and extracurricular activities, leaving little free time in the day for my own enjoyment. My Sustained Investigation captures fleeting moments of joy from my everyday life, highlighting how our existence is an accumulation of many brief, significant memories, including spending time with family, admiring the beauty of domestic environments, and creating art. Small moments, though important now, will be left behind as I move onto the next chapter of my life when I graduate.

2. Describe ways your sustained investigation developed through practice, experimentation, and revision.

Works 1-6 highlight the beauty of my everyday environment. Work 1 shows my practice with Impressionist landscape colors. I later revised Works 3 and 5 to not only represent physical spaces, but also my interactions with them. Works 7, 8, 12, and 13 demonstrate my experimentation with bright orange under-paintings to convey warmth. I experimented with Japanese-inspired colors and lines in Works 10 and 11 to capture serenity in domestic environments. In Work 9, loose washes reflect the state of dreaming. Finally, I experimented with collage and a unique point of view in Works 14 and 15.