“Art is pretty much my entire life.” said sophomore Terry Baker, a student who like many others uses art to deal with stress. It is common among students to use art as a way of dealing with stress“ It feels like something is my own. Even if everything else is out of control, if school work is piling up and there’s all this personal life stress of just existing you can sit down and draw or write or any other thing and it’s your own way of keeping yourself sane.”

Baker is a writer and considers art to be a valid form of stress relief and it is common knowledge that it serves a similar purpose for many other students and many people in general.

Thomas Willicombe is an art teacher at south who also believes art has its merits as a form of stress relief. “When you start usually you kinda get into a flow and you’re not really thinking about anything else, you’re really focused on what you’re doing and I think that can help relieve stress because you’re able to kinda disconnect from whatever it is that’s making you stressed.”

If art helps with stress it should go without saying that the intent of art classes is to refine an artist’s craft and subsequently help with stress. However sometimes these classes can have the opposite of their intended impact.

10th grade Leslie Ponce thinks art classes can be very stressful primarily because of the fear of rejection. “Those very difficult [topics] that students can not do and they try their best and they put a lot of effort into it but it’s not the effort teachers want.”

Baker agrees that under certain circumstances art classes can be very stressful. “It depends on whether or not you bond with the teacher because art is very much a personal thing and if you’re doing art with someone you don’t personally click with then you can sometimes get on each other’s nerves.”

Willicombe believes sometimes even when art is being created for fun it still has potential to cause stress. “Sometimes if a painting or drawing isn’t going exactly the way you want, making lots of errors or having to erase and things like that can be stressful.”

However it is thought that this affect from art classes is not universal. Ponce believes the stress of art classes and the stress of art in general can be different for everyone. “I get stressed very easily and [art] does kinda calm down the stress but there’s times where art itself is stressful. It doesn’t matter what art class you take it’s stressful anyway.”

A lot of the stress of art for Ponce comes from the specificity and variation art classes can present. “It’s… the type of topics that the teachers are teaching, some may be good, some may be bad it just depends on topics.”

Ponce thinks a lot of the stress from an art class can also come from the challenge and that this stress can be avoided by simply enjoying your craft. “It’s [a] challenge but if you love art then there’s not much of a challenge there.” However Willcombe believes that passion for art can make its creation more stressful. “Especially if you are struggling at something it can be more frustrating just because you wanna do so well on it and sometimes that can make it extra frustrating.”

Despite how helpful art can be as far as eliminating stress, sometimes classes that seek to improve an artist’s product can eliminate the arts actual usefulness as far as stress relief goes. Art is very important to people such as Baker. “It’s a way to express yourself and vent out frustrations.” Baker later said: “It’s a comfort zone like a safe space almost.” This comfort zone should be cultivated carefully.