Gift Nnamdi, Class of 2019

Behind every image is a complex story that shapes an artist’s intention and mirrors life in unexplainable ways. Whether it is appeasing gods through ritualistic activities, pleasing the church with commissions of majestic paintings of religious figures, or seeking abstract ways to deal with catastrophic wars, Art History is a discipline that transcends a scholar squarely into the political, sociological, and religious climate of various cultures. Art History is like studying a visual language that offers the tools for both formal and contextual analysis in an increasingly visual world. It reveals what makes us human through morals, traditions, and emotions. As an interdisciplinary humanities course, it has helped me improve my analytical and critical thinking skills that I apply to other areas of study. Museum visits now consist of me dissecting the story behind a work of art, and I can’t help but admire the architectural designs that exist right in the boundaries of Chaffey High School. It is almost unbelievable that thousands of years from now, new scholars will be able to understand the life of early twenty-first century humans through our art.