summer 2014

AP Art Concentrations: Arianna Tamaddon, Yesenia Herrera Kraig Fujii

Photo exhibit popculture, and more!

Goodbye To Bard’s Founding Seniors

Content Letter from the Editor ...4

AP Art Concentrations ...6 Riya’s Recommendations...12 BDF...13 Farewell to the Founders...14 Katz...22

Issue theme: Scrapbook photoalbum Editor-in-Chief: Helena Ong Writing Editor: Riya Mirchandaney Layout Editor: Maya Varma Publicity and Blog Editor: Scott Stevens Phtography Editor: Avalon Edwards Reporter: Kate Lazar, Lauren Jacques, Samantha Frenkel-Popell

Summer 2015

“Hello.”

It’s a great word. It’s simple and only says what it means to say.

From the slight breath at the beginning, before your tongue touches the top of your mouth, then tapping the back of your teeth, perhaps even with a slight trill as your lips form around the sound, a familiar sound yet typically spoken to a stranger.

I am not a stranger to the Bard. I’ve been a reporter for the last two years, but this is my first time addressing you as Editor-in-Chief. As the seniors and founders of the Bard are taking off for college, they left yours truly in charge.

For this issue, we chose to go for a scrapbook photo album style to capture the memories of this past year. From the AP Art concentrations that fill the CADC, to pop culture, photography, speakers and of course, our seniors, we want to look back at these and the impressions they will leave behind. These impression are what create and preserve the images that we keep in our minds, even as we go off onto college and past high school. Let us keep those images and photos tucked safely away in our memories and celebrate them.

So, while the seniors must say farewell, I say hello. Hello to something old and something new. So hello, until I too must say goodbye. kthxbai, Helena Ong (Editor-in-Chief)

m o r f r e t t e L r o t i d E e h t

t r A AP s n o i t a r t n e Conc r ma &

By Maya Va Kate Lazar

Seniors Arianna Tamaddo n and Craig Fuji, along with junior Yesenia Herre ra, were a part of this year s AP art class. The purpos e of the class is to make a full portfolio that traces one specific concentratio n.

Tamaddon focused on m odern day addictions, Fu jii did a concentration on is colation, and Herrera ch ose to do a series on “the dem ons of our everyday lives �.

For senior Arianna Tamaddon’s AP Art portfolio, she critiqued how people look at addictions through a colorful photography concentration.

“My concentration was an attempt to portray socially-accepted addictions such as Netflix, makeup, or shopping) in the more serious light of stigmatized addictions (such as heroin, cocaine, or hoarding),” Tamaddon said.

“I was inspired to illustrate ‘harmless’ guilty pleasures in the format of taboo habits since I wanted to explore our society’s thin line between indulgence and addiction. I aimed to parallel our use of social media with a drug addict’s use of narcotics as a common goal to disconnect from reality.”

Tamaddon played with colors schemes in her photographs as well, mixing vibrant hues with black and white to convey various moods around the theme of addiction. “I photographed my subjects with dramatic lighting to capture a myriad of values and contrasts.

I would then photoshop my pieces to create a black and white reality in which I could further highlight the overly-saturated ‘addiction,’ “ Tamaddon stated. “This was a new media for me since I primarily work with acrylic painting and drawing.”

“AP Art, as a class, started out very slow and laid back--mainly because we didn’t realize the reality of the impeding portfolio deadline,” she said.

Tamaddon stated that although the class wasn’t like a normal AP with intense homework and tests every week, it was still difficult to put together a portfolio that would appeal to the AP board. “Art is so subjective,” she said, “but [art teacher, Nina Ollikainen] was really great at providing helpful feedback.”

Tamaddon plans to continue art through studio art and photography classes in college. “I come from a very art-driven family, so it’s part of my day to day life,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop doing art.”

Junior Yesenia Herrera’s concentration, translated from Spanish, is “The Demons of Our Daily Lives.” It’s a reflection of her personality and a diary of her personal demons. Her portfolio focused on issues that come up in her daily life, exploring topics such as race and sexuality. While these are issues that could make people feel uncomfortable, she chose to include them as they are both meaningful topics to her and are also inherently universal. Herrera, inspired by artists like Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, tried to imitate the style of many muralists in San Francisco. “I am fascinated by the culture of the mission. I just fell in love with it,” Herrera said. Her unique style is colorful and spontaneous. She has no fear of messing up, adding, “I close my eyes and put a hand out, and whatever works, works. If I mess up, I can go back and retouch.”

For Herrera, the greatest challenge of AP Art was the open-ended style of the class. Because the class has very little curriculum and hardly gives guidance with handling deadlines, each student had to put enormous amounts of energy into making a successful portfolio without running out of time. “You’re expected to be creative and be an artist from the moment you get here,” Herrera said. Students are given complete freedom, which, for Herrera and the majority of AP Art students, came as a bit of a shock.

While Herrera is fortunate to have a distinctive style, she found it difficult to break away from her technique and make new kinds of art for the portfolio. For AP Art, each student is supposed to have concentration pieces as well as breadth pieces that show a wide range of methods. While Herrera loves to experiment with different mediums, it was tricky to get past that specific curve in her art.

Herrera plans to continue with art in some way, even if she enters a

completely different career. To her, it is a way to foster happiness and

release anger, as well as to make her voice heard.

Senior Kraig Fujii’s concentration dealt with images of isolation.

In his portfolio, he wanted to show what isolation meant to him, and was inspired by his personal experiences with it. Trying to display the emotional aspects, Fujii used ideas of a prison and its internal origins.

He hoped to express that isolation, “can seem hopeless at times, locked away in a little world.”

Fujii used basic photographic techniques, with a strong, central subject in black and white. He played around with light and saturation, creating a lot of dark, deep shadows in his photos.

One of the things Fujii liked the best about AP Art was the culture of the students in the class. “People will support you, especially near the end when things get panicked. It was great getting to bounce ideas off of other people and off [art teacher, Nina Ollikainen],” Fujii said.

His greatest struggle this year was time management. In AP Art, it’s easy to get behind and have everything due in the last month.

“Some people had to practically sleep over to get their portfolio done this year,” Fujii said. Another struggle was working with new types of art outside of his comfort zone, such as painting. In the end, it was a satisfying experience as he ultimately saw a major growth in himself as an artist.

In college, Fujii plans to major in Game Art and Production, which will teach him about designing video games and include elements of digital art, 3d modeling, and animation in the curriculum.

This will be very different from what he’s done in the AP, but Fujii is excited to see where it leads him.

While Fujii cannot say whether his career will be one that primarily involves art, he still hopes to continue with art in any way possible.

Left page, top row, left to right: Kraig Fujii, Yesenia Herrera Left page, second row, left to right: Arianna Tamaddon, Yesenia Herrera Right page, top row: Arianna Tamaddon Right Page, second row, left to right: Kraig Fujii, Yesenia Herrera Right page, bottom row: Arianna Tamaddon

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Farewell Founders To The

By Helena Ong, Riya Mirchandaney, Avalon Edwards, and Maya Varma

e and h s , e r o m o h p l was a so a h g n i S a y a e arts en M n h li w n , o o n g a a s e t r a a e e Two y her and cr t e g o t t e g o t cided her friends de The Bard. : e n i z a g a m and lifestyle -in-Chief r o it d E s r e he found t f o r aphy r u g o f o t ll o a h h P , it n w , w nter Bro This year u H r o it d E g ail-d Blo h t n a a K y it ja c o li o b P u r P Singhal, ent Edito t n o C d n a , t r k at their inga c e a b W k n o ly e lo t a a e K Editor ke to tak li ld u o w e w , college moving on to work.

Left to right: Katelyn Weingart, Maya Singhal, Hunter Brown, Pooji Kathail

Editor-in-Chief Maya Singhal

By Helena Ong

In her sophomore year, Singhal and Rhea Pokorny came up with the cornerstone idea for the Bard--a magazine with a focus on the arts.

“The reason we have Bard [...] is because the arts really aren’t central to Menlo,” Singhal said, “The impact of arts education is undervalued in most schools in the US….The arts are about emotion and self-expression [...] and I think we should be promoting artists to promote those ideals, just like we promote athletes to promote strength and physical health.”

Since then, the journey has not been easy. Layout has been a challenge, often forcing her to work 12 hours over the weekends.

“I managed to find a hugely talented staff so quickly last year, and they produced such incredible writing and photographs, but it definitely took a long time to put everything together,” Singhal said.

When asked of her favorite issue, Singhal responded with the race and gender issue. “We explored topics that I’m very passionate about, and I think our writers just hit it out of the park,” Singhal said. Over the month the issue was published, it hit 1771 views.

“The arts are about emotion and self-expression [...] and I think we should be promoting artists to promote those ideals, just like we promote athletes to promote strength and physical health.”

“I hope that people read Bard and feel empowered to be unabashedly themselves. I hope Bard encourages people to appreciate and seek out both beautiful things and their peers’ incredible talents.“

From that experience, Singhal is looking to major in American studies and minor in creative writing. “I think Bard’s race and gender issue was inspired by the same part of me that makes me want to do American studies, but the success of that issue and the discussions it prompted also pushed me to explore these topics further,” she said.

While she will be going to NYU in the fall, her influence and work as founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Bard will continue within Menlo. “I hope that Bard will always be a safe place for people who feel different in the Menlo community. I hope that people read Bard and feel empowered to be unabashedly themselves. I hope Bard encourages people to appreciate and seek out both beautiful things and their peers’ incredible talents. [...] Honestly, if Bard or I gave even one person more hope, that would be the best lasting impression that I could leave.”

Publicity & Blog Editor:

By Riya Mirchandaney Someone on the internet once said to Hunter Brown

not trust “white boys named Hunter.” Everyone knows Hunter Brown:

senior, ex-blog editor for the Bard, and dude who “works out a lot.” Whether or not you want to trust him is a different story.

Brown’s academic interests are closer to the maths and sciences, and he plans to major in Statistics and Economics at Stanford. Regardless of this inclination, Brown still finds fulfillment among the humanities, writing for the Bard and dabbling in English electives.

Brown does have an identity outside of academia, though. “I played tennis like, nonstop, all the time, and absolutely loved it,” said Brown about his previous extracurriculars.

But the cycle of injuries that accompanied his intensity with the sport caused him to quit for a while. As a sophomore, Brown was determined to fill the void in both his schedule and his heart by participating in clubs at Menlo and trying harder at school.

Recruited by friend and ex-Bard Editor-in-Chief Maya Singhal during their junior year, Brown began his role in the Bard as a sort of technological editor/website organizer.

However, with his profound ignorance surrounding WordPress, he soon found himself more intrigued in the writing aspect of it all. Thus, he became the blog editor. One of his proud achievements is contributing a post to the blog every day the month before his senior year.

Off campus, Brown likes reading and When asked if he considers watching movies, which he often uses as inspihimself a funny person, he ration for his Bard posts. “I found writing for hesitated, struggled visibly, the Bard kinda fun because I could just talk about things that I thought were interesting chuckled, and coughed out a, and if people thought they were interesting, “God. Yes.” then [that was] good, and if they didn’t, then that was okay too,” Brown said. His favorite movie is the 1994 Tarantino classic Pulp Fiction, and his favorite book is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. He also enjoys reading dark imagery, especially from the Gothic era.

A man who cares deeply about his family, Brown has two older sisters whom he loves, as well as five dogs named Josie, Gizmo, Sadie, Posey, and Badger.

When asked if he considers himself a funny person, he hesitated, struggled visibly, chuckled, and coughed out a, “God. Yes.” He continued on, “I think I’m pretty self-deprecating, so people laugh at me a lot. I don’t know if people laugh with me a lot, but, you know, it’s always fun to hate on yourself a little bit.”

Content Editor Pooja Kathail

Pooja Kathail, the former content By Maya Varma editor of the Bard, started working on “To me, the Bard is a symbol the magazine during her junior year. “My of what can be accomplished main role has been writing articles for the when a group of people decide Bard each issue and editing other articles,” Kathail said. “Some of my friends to do something new, something were doing it and it seemed like a really they are excited and passionate about.” creative idea.”

Kathail reminisced that her favorite memory of the Bard was seeing the first issue come out. The first issue was published in the Fall of 2012. “I just loved seeing how good the images and layout design looked,” she said. “To me, the Bard is a symbol of what can be accomplished when a group of people decide to do something new, something that they are excited and passionate about.”

Since Kathail is leaving this year to college, she left some hopes for the Bard in the future. “I hope the Bard will evolve to suit the interests of its new editors while preserving the original goals behind its creation,” Kathail said.

“I don’t plan reporting, writing, or designing as a career, but student publications have been a big part of my experience at Menlo and I may continue to be involved in them in college.” Her efforts in writing thoughtful and journalistic pieces on Menlo students and events that are often overlooked will remain as a foundation for what the Bard was meant to be.

Senior Katelyn Weingart joined the Bard at the beginning of her junior year, working mainly as a lead photographer. At the beginning of her time with the Bard, she played a role in planning what the magazine would be and how they wanted to “differentiate [them]selves as a news source at Menlo.”

Weingart used

documentary style photography as a powerful way to “simultaneously raise

awareness and capture

[her] perspective on

different issues.”

Weingart’s favorite aspect of the magazine was working on it as a collaborative effort with the rest of the editors and reports. To Weingart, she saw it as a refreshing experience to see that the people involved in the

By Avalon Edwards Bard were excited and invested in what they were doing. Weingart has always loved art, and uses photography as a primary way to express herself. She has enjoyed particularly focusing on documentary style photography during her career because she feels as though it’s a powerful way to “simultaneously raise awareness and capture [her] perspective on different issues.”

Photography Editor Katelyn Weingart

Katz

By Scott Stevens Photo provided by Menlo Photo bank

Memorable or not, Jackson Katz came. A speaker for “women’s issues as

everybody’s issues,” Mr. Katz presented to the school that gender issues, particularly relating to violence, apply to all of us.

His execution (identical to his online TedTalk) and accuracy of these problems aside, the ambition was to provoke conversation on Menlo’s stance towards gender issues. Because we vary in familiarity with violence and gender, some students disagreed as to how forceful his self-proclaimed attack on male privilege was. Many of us, males and females, rolled our eyes, thinking, “We’re all good, none of us would ever support violence. Why are they paying this dude to preach and shout at us? We’re not a messed up drop-out factory?!?”

We’ll get back to this reaction after an explanation.

I’m going to springboard off Mr. Katz’s talk and how his emphasis on violence didn’t help Menlo much; it only brushed up against what actually concerns us: privilege. Our school gets people places. Isn’t it a blessing to receive a prep school education? This blessing, this privilege, to chase after one’s dreams, evokes Menlo as a fantastic school where nothing bad ever happens, sans sleep debt.

But some students have more privilege than others. From a survey Ms. Portman’s Contemporary American Issues class conducted, 47% of Menlo kids believed that money helps determine one’s social groups at our school. Classmates of color face teachers smiling at them, mistaking them for another student of color, and then not even blinking to correct the mistake. Girls receive the burden to appear presentable, to be more bubbly, lest be doomed to be “that bitch.” Don’t go too overboard, ‘cause then you’ll be desperate. Most of us imagine Asians occupying the top grade percentile. And as the only guy outof-the-closet at Menlo (that I’m aware of), I’ll testify to the scant numbers of openly LGBTQ folk. By default, this environment assumes straightness, white culture (see: no prominent speech patterns and style expressions from what we color as “non-white”), as well as “masculine” forms of competition both within the classroom and without. If you need more proof for privilege at Menlo, check out Maya Singhal’s staggeringly extensive coverage of the topic in her Senior Presentation :http://diversitysp.wordpress.com/ What creeps in is that this accidental division is not visible at Menlo. M-A holds us to the magnifying glass as the rich kids, the smart, high-achieving hopefuls of Silicon Valley. Girls? Equal! We are race-blind; we love gays; we have a fundraising event for financial aid. Go Menlo! If we receive more advantages over most people on earth, why should we complain?

Complain indeed. While some of us suffer from pariah’s pain, lots of students are hurt from pressures unrelated to privilege imbalances such as aggressive parents, unstable family life, or depression. Because of the gratitude we must show for our privileged education at Menlo, many kids grow frustrated that they can’t express other worries gnawing at them. We dare not step over the “happy” status quo, for fear of being too dramatic, looking like that whiner in the corner. Our workload becomes a cover complaint for all the other hidden, personal stress-causers. In effect, the whole school suffers when we are uninformed of each other’s issues.

This brings us back to some of the school’s reaction, “Oh, violence has nothing to do with Menlo, and Jackson Katz focused on rape and hate crimes.”

But look past what seems normal or fine! Mr. Katz’s talk didn’t address Menlo’s problem, but that does not mean we can excuse ourselves and ignore what we may do to connect all members of Menlo and ease the isolation that comes with having a little difference in ourselves.