Shruti Pritmani

Freshman Shruti Pritmani has immersed herself in a world of color and imagination for as long as she can remember. Her days are filled with canvases, tubes of paint and competitions as she has honed her skills since she was four years old. 

During her time in the art program at CHS9, she competed in the regional VASE competition where she earned a state medal with her work “Putting on a Mask.”

How would you describe the interview portion of the State VASE process?
I wasn’t nervous. I was pretty comfortable and I thought it was fun. I had a really nice conversation with my judge and it went well. 

What inspired this piece?

I showed how I would show myself on a social media platform which I think multiple people would relate with, not just me that social media would make you want to alter your appearance. That’s why in the artwork, I’m putting on makeup, doing my hair and I’m also on my phone so it’s just showing the online world. I could relate to it a lot. I think that my appearance really affects the way I think and if I look bad, then I would not feel like myself but if I look better, I would definitely feel more like myself. I am really into realism, I want to make my work as realistic as possible and make it look as much as me. Charcoal is a black and white medium so I chose to do it on a black paper in all black and white. If there were multiple colors, I feel like the meaning would deviate from what I wanted to show. In black and white, everything looks the same and you’re more focused on the details rather than the colors. 

What are you trying to showcase using your art?

I wanted to show that I’m at such a young age and I’m already influenced by social media especially because I started getting on social media right when COVID hit. When I was on my phone all the time, that had a really big impact on the way I thought of the online world. My brainstorming process because with so many sketches, choosing the right one is the most important thing. For this specific project, we were given multiple themes or prompts that we could choose from. Based on the theme I chose, I made multiple sketches of my face doing multiple actions and seeing which would give a better meaning and which one I would think would reflect my personal experience more. 

What was an unexpected obstacle when creating this piece?

We had some weather issues during this time and we had a couple of days off from school so I was not able to work on my artwork at all before VASE. Maybe two days before, I had to cram half of the work process in and I definitely did not think I would have to be working that much within two days.

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