Leah Ambriz was born and raised in Bakersfield, California in 2005. As a child she was fascinated by Disney movies and every character’s unique style. Her love of drawing started with the movie Rio (2011) and its use of bright colors and animation.

Ambriz’s family have always been big supporters of her art. Her father helped her get started when she was younger by giving her animal cards which she used to study and draw different types of birds. Cartoons like Gravity Falls and Looney Toons encouraged her to experiment with different styles of art, shaping her into the artist she is today.

Currently, her preferred method of drawing has been with alcohol markers, but she recently branched out to watercolor and colored pencils. She is excited to keep pursuing her passion for art and doing what she loves. She hopes to animate her own characters and work more with graphic design in the future.

This piece was created to show a different perspective of cartoon art and how it can represent darker meanings with large underlying messages. The Rig Move visualizes the negative effects people have on the environment. The main antagonist, while seemingly recycling, is trying to cover up the fact that big businesses are still polluting the environment and pushing their employees to work in unsafe conditions. He is shown here focusing on the money in his hand and ignoring the tired and burnt-out characters in the background. Pollution has a huge impact not only on the climate, but also on the people and their wellbeing.

-Leah Ambriz

Born in 2004 in Bakersfield, CA, Rosa Avila loves to use storytelling as an outlet as a child, writing fictional stories about anything she could think of. She recalls wanting to write books when she was young, but in middle school she discovered abstract and line art. Her love and appreciation for art blossomed in high school and she dedicated most of her time to creating art during the COVID-19 quarantine; it became her primary channel for expressing and coping with her emotions. The materials she frequently uses in her work are color pencil and acrylic paint, but her goal is to branch out and experiment with other mediums and continue to make art as a form of expression so she can share it with others.

I believe Human Nature consists of emotions and unhealthy habits that we as humans tend to form without realizing it. These are experiences that we have once faced or have known about. Through my piece, I display The Law of Self Sabotage titled La Esperanza, meaning “The Hope.” In my piece there are 2 nude figures, a child and a woman, both representing the same person. Both capable of the same amazing potential and dreams. Due to misguidance, this was not the outcome. The woman longs for aspiration and motivation but feels as if she’s not adequate. The woman’s negative mental patterns attach a negative connotation to every opportunity that rose to the surface. Because of her self-sabotaging actions, she loathes the woman she has become. However, her inner child, full of innocence and opportunity, offers the woman her heart, representing a glimpse of hopeful change. The question remains, ‘Will she change for herself?

-Rosa Avila

Born and raised in Bakersfield, CA, Mary Gregory is a 17-year-old artist who is immensely inspired by the Surrealist painters of the 1920s and Impressionist painters of the 19th century. She especially loves Surrealism  because it allows deeper exploration into the inner workings of the mind. Her previous artistic experience includes designing the eighth-grade yearbook cover and painting a bathroom wall in the Snow Shack located on Brimhall Road. This year she will attend a four-week long summer art program at California Institute of the Arts and hopes to collaborate with other artists there. After high school she hopes to continue her education and pursue art as a serious career.

The question of what makes you human is interesting, a concept I had to seriously consider for the first time while making this piece. My pieces are a direct reflection of the state of my mind in that moment, with no real intention behind their creation. I knew at the start of this painting I wanted to connect the idea of human nature to childhood experiences, but the original image has changed drastically throughout this process. Most of my pieces are inspired by the intrusive thoughts, questions, and daydreams I have throughout the day. The child depicted here is based on my sister and reflects my interest in child psychology and development. I have found that the question I wanted to ask about human nature was, ‘How will this bond, which she may never remember, shape this girl’s life, and what does it say to you as the viewer about the human experience and about how we form meaningful relationships?

-Mary Gregory

Born in Bakersfield in 2004, Leia Kopp proved to be  academically-oriented early on and did not take art seriously until late 2017. Taking inspiration from artists past and present led her to using art as a creative outlet. Her process fluctuates between methodical with material and dimension, to extremely chaotic with no middle ground. Nonetheless, she considers the work on display to be strategic through the progression of rough drafts, advising and critique. Here, Kopp focuses on death and how it is often forgotten—human nature tends to fear and shove away the reality that we all come and go.

My piece is working to create something that can physically represent the disregard for the nature of death. Using watercolor and two pieces, I hope to physically represent the disconnect that humanity has with the acceptance of death. I am doing this because death is something I think about often, from what it means, to its purpose, to why it even matters, and I feel it is an important thing to think about. The inspiration for most of my work comes from my own experiences in the world around me. With my contemporaries, it is interesting to see how we all took the term ‘human nature’ and adapted it into an art form that we saw fit. With all our pieces being displayed together it shows how people can take a single topic and shift and mold it into their own definition. For others understanding my art, a main goal of mine is to not give them a ‘correct’ definition or meaning behind the piece. Just because their reaction or feelings about the piece may be different does not mean that it is wrong or incorrect in some way, it is simply that: different.

-Leia Kopp

Aleyna Lencioni is 17 years old and was born in Dornbirn, Austria. Of Austrian and Turkish descent, Lencioni moved to the United States with her mother and younger brother. Her life was quite turbulent until she reached middle school, but she found solace in the stories that art, nature, and people had to tell. She always enjoyed discovering other worlds within the one around her.

I created a piece that focuses on the parallels between bears and humans regarding motherhood. The piece displays an instance, one of many, in which mothers bare the pain and harshness of the world and thus protecting their children for as long as possible. I want others to see through my art that there are endless parallels between the natural world and the human one, and that the line between things we deem as human nature and actual nature may be more blurred than we think. My art is a piece of myself, so it is fragile, but I am always willing to risk fracture for the sake of creation.

-Aleyna Lenconi

Maia Pankey uses art to express her deepest feelings. She has been creating art since she was a child and has dedicated herself to her craft because in her eyes it has never failed to give her a sense of emotional liberation. Art has and will always be what makes her who she is.

It’s human nature to be paranoid. With my canvas on the bigger side, the goal is to make the viewer the subject of the piece. The forest is alive and watching, the eyes on the trees watch your every move. They are there when you don’t make an effort to see them. The eyes watch as someone too afraid to look goes about their life with looming anxiety and paranoia of the unknown. I want people to look at it and feel that same discomfort that they might feel in unfamiliar public places. In this piece, I used watercolor and gouache for highlights to bring in more dimension.

-Maia Pankey

Vanessa Parsons was born in Bakersfield, CA, in 2004. Since childhood she has had a passion for filmmaking and painting, with her favorite part being the process rather than the outcome. Inspiration for her art comes from the personalities and obstacles of the people around her, examining topics such as substance abuse, childhood, family, and modern influences such as the internet affect our personalities. Currently, her work consists mostly of portrait paintings but she plans to branch out to documentary and norm-core film-making to highlight the lives of the people she admires or figures she considers to be polarizing.

In my piece entitled 8 connections I showcase the individual yet similar personalities of eight of my peers through an oil painting as well as audio recording. I conducted 12+ interviews with classmates of mine, some of whom I vaguely knew. Everyone was asked these six questions: “What is your name? How old are you? What is your greatest accomplishment? What is your most treasured memory? What is your worst memory? Tell me a joke?” This provided what they found to be important, funny, or precious/traumatic. The presence of the camera originally to capture the interview also added a layer of awkwardness which is ideal when capturing the essence of 16- and 17-year-olds, rather than a one-on-one handwritten interview. Like the work of my contemporaries, I feel “human nature” to be a shared experience. While the experiences and priorities shift from person to person, we are all (mostly) sympathetic creatures with flaws and insecurities. I want people to know that the process in which my art is made is important to me. I am willing and excited to discuss most aspects of my work.

-Vanessa Parsons

Born in 2004 in Bakersfield, CA, Korayma Ramirez has always enjoyed painting and drawing, while creating things like wire rings and bracelets. Some of her friends even asked her to make personalized drawings for them for Valentine’s Day. One of her goals is to become a tattoo artist and recreate the drawings from her imagination.

My work shows people’s relationship to Mother Nature. I want to express how much we have mistreated Mother Nature and yet she still depends on us to be her shoulder and help her grow flowers and trees. What influenced me to do this drawing was wildfires’ destruction of land and homes through human intervention. Some fires aren’t controllable, and some are, but it doesn’t matter how the fire happened, their devastation on Mother Nature is inevitable. I want people to understand how horrible it feels to be destroyed and gravely affected by the people we care about.

-Korayma Ramirez

Stephanie Robinson was born in Long Beach, CA, in 2004 but spent a lot of her childhood living in different cities and attending different schools. Drawing inspiration from animation, folklore, and political cartoons, art felt like the only thing she had control of in her life. Robinson has always had a connection to pigs as far back as elementary school, noting that people often associated pigs with negative things such as laziness, slobbery, or gluttony. She believes it is in human nature to stay away from things that we do not like because our instincts view discomfort as a threat.

Viewers should confront whatever faults they may have that would constitute them as a “pig.” The use of pigs is not meant to make one feel disgusted of themselves. It is meant to attract attention and understand that there is nothing wrong with being imperfect. Pigs are very loving and gentle creatures despite what most believe. Our impurities should be seen in the same way and accepted as human nature.

My work is a commentary on a predicament that I and many others have or will encounter at least once in their lives: ‘Should we give up our passions to pursue the status quo?’ Using pieces that show three stories of a housewife, you are meant to understand that taking the wrong decision can lead to one becoming unhappy with their life. My use of multimedia contradicts a feeling of flatness and uniformity - it is much like life in the way that nothing is ever black or white. The viewer is meant to question whether they have ever made any decisions to abandon something in pursuit of something else. ‘Do you regret this decision or are you happy that you made it?’ There is no correct interpretation of this piece.  I only want people to have meaningful conversations with themselves and sort out what makes them feel most happy and self-fulfilled.

-Stephanie Robinson

Jacob Sandoval was born on August 5, 2004, in Bakersfield, CA. After meeting fellow student Valerie Catalina Ortiz in the eighth grade, he was impressed by her photographic work taken on her phone and was inspired to pick up the practice as a sophomore in high school. He pursued photography throughout the rest of his high school career, shooting any sports events he could attend to help improve his skills. He is currently working on expressing more emotion in his portraiture and landscape work, and hopes to have his own photography studio after graduating from college.

My artwork illuminates the cruel and unjust natures of humanity using symbols and monochromatic coloring. With the knowledge obtained through my own personal experiences and the experiences from close loved ones, my work attempts to capture a dependency on foreign substances to cope with obstacles in life. My artwork is not meant to claim everyone deals with substance abuse issues. However, it is meant to directly show the ubiquitous problem of humanity's reliance on foreign substances to ease their pain.

-Jacob Sandoval

Katherine Stabile was born in 2004 in Bakersfield, CA. As a child she liked to draw anime which eventually led her to realism and representing her subjects as accurately as they appear in real life. Currently, Stabile swims and creates art in her free time. She prefers to draw people since she finds the most satisfaction in capturing a sense of realism in her work. She hopes to become more skilled in a more Surrealist approach as many of her inspirations are Surrealist artists.

My artwork connects the emotions of human nature through a Surrealist lens. The references for my work have mixtures of realism and my own experiences that I’ve encountered while coming of age. I use mixed media to contrast the simplicity of the scenes using watercolors, to complex emotions captured by the more geometric and harsh shapes using acrylic and ink. I find that different materials can do more of what I want than say a singular type of paint or brand of pen. My art signals the common fleeting experience of youth no one can seem to hold onto, and I think it offers a balance to the work of my peers, highlighting the major facets within our unifying theme of Human Nature.

-Katherine Stabile

Jory Truitt is a junior at Bakersfield High School. She is primarily a ceramic artist, but she also created traditional and digital drawings. She makes cute pieces because they bring her joy, and she aims to bring that same sense of happiness to her audience. She has been making art her whole life and it has always brought her peace and fulfillment.

This piece represents the relationship between people and the oceans along with humanity’s continuous dismissal of the harm they cause to our planet through the mediums of ceramics and wood carving. The whale represents the beauty of undeveloped nature, but upon closer look the decay and destruction that is taking place within the whale can be seen. The fluid line of skeletons of endangered species inside the whale move the viewer’s eye along the length of the piece. I’m very fond of the juxtaposition between the more accurately proportioned whale and the cartoon-like simplified skeletons.

-Jory Truitt

Isabella “River” Williams was born in Bakersfield, CA.  They are a ceramic artist who likes to sculpt human bodies and scare people with their work. They have only worked with ceramics for about a year, but it has become a huge passion. Their family is full of artists so they’re happy they can officially call themselves one as well.

Each of these three pieces are ceramic sculptures made by hand. While they were made as individuals, collectively they dive deep into the human nature of sight itself. By looking at them all together one may not see the grotesque rot on one side of the ball or may even miss the eyes on the back of the woman. Each piece has eyes that represent different types of sight. The ball shows how beauty can conceal death and rot. The woman and her mushrooms show how eyes on someone’s back can cause them slowly to rot of self-hatred or embarrassment. Lastly the eye on the palm of the hand represents the supposed all seeing eye, which is heavily used in the occult. When put together yet viewed separately the meanings between these pieces are endless.

-River Williams