Sunset Middle School Arts Student of the Week Aliyah Olivares

The Sunset Middle School Arts Student of the Week, seventh-grader Aliyah Olivares, was nominated for her incredible drive to create and learn about art. She improves her craft with every iteration and studies art in and outside of school whenever she has free time.

Olivares creates art in many different mediums including clay sculpting, digital drawing and artwork, papercraft and paper maché. She particularly enjoys paper maché, however her favorite medium is drawing. She is planning on expanding her series of puppet dragons as one of her next projects, to improve them.

"I've done some clay projects and some...animal paper maché, which is really fun and it's quite amazing," Olivares explained. "I draw paper puppet dragons. I have four of them. I love to draw anime. I seriously want to draw them so badly. And my dad gave me a special book, an anime book, so I can learn how to draw anime."

Olivares aspires to continue drawing, sculpting, and practicing papercraft to get progressively better so she can capture creatures or places from her imagination, and also the world around her. She is excited to try entering her artwork in competitions in the future.

"I'm very creative, I like to draw," Olivares added, "so in my free time I feel like I like to draw anything that I see.... My surroundings inspire me, like I want to try this, I want to try that. So I practice every drawing that I do and if I keep drawing, then I am better at it."

Jennifer Tjornehoj, one of Aliyah's art teachers who nominated her as Arts Student of the Week due to her commitment to fine art, said, "Aliyah is so dedicated and productive. She is always creating art. Her favorite is drawing anime, but she intuitively picks up and refines any medium she tries."