For Cameryn Popiel, members of her family have been an important part of her path in art. Her sister had taken art classes and focused more on ceramics and 3D art, and even though Popiel prefers pencil and graphite, her sister’s experience was influential for her. Therefore, when Popiel got to high school, she took Art I, Art II, Ceramics I, Ceramics II, and AP Art.

In addition to her sister, Popiel’s parents have been supportive of her art, especially by letting her know that she could do it as a career. Her dad, in particular, enjoyed both physics and art in high school, which played an important role in shaping Popiel’s own perspective on pursuing art. 

“My dad’s bringing me up to learn to love and integrate a lot of different things. . . made me feel that a career in the arts or pursuing the arts was more of an option because you can integrate it into anything else that you want to do,” said Popiel.

In her art specifically, Popiel described how she likes to integrate nature because it is something that is personal to her.

“I grew up in the Adirondacks, so that’s always been a calming place to me. I feel like it has a lot of beauty, and I always love incorporating that whenever I can,” said Popiel.

This connection to nature goes along with Popiel’s interests outside of AP Art, as she enjoys doing activities outdoors such as hiking. She wants to be an ADK 46er, which involves climbing all of the high peaks in the Adirondack Mountain Range. In addition, Popiel enjoys weightlifting, and she recently started to play guitar.

In AP Art, each student completes a Sustained Investigation, and Popiel focuses on eating disorders and how the media portrays and glamorizes them in a way that is harmful to women.

“I think that just being immersed in social media, especially over quarantine and everything and with TikTok, I feel like there was just a lot of misinformation being put out there,” said Popiel. “So I wanted to create pieces that were not super obvious about what the message was as opposed to the Instagram infographics that we see.  I wanted to show a different side of eating disorders and things of that nature then what people usually see.”

Also in AP Art, each student is supposed to take a risk with one of their pieces, and Popiel chose to use some materials that she had not used before. She beaded art wire with green beads to be used as hair, in addition to using a new type of paper.

“That one was really fun, and it turned out to be one of my favorite pieces,” said Popiel.

Some of Popiel’s favorite aspects of AP Art are the people and the environment. “It definitely is such a different energy, unlike my other classes. It’s one of those things where I can walk in and just relax and feel comfortable. . .I just love having it as a part of my day,” said Popiel.

Going forward, Popiel will be going to school for art and plans to pursue it as a career.