SAND LAKE — Averill Park High School graduate Liam Rounds is one of the few students nationwide to achieve a perfect grade in his Advanced Place Art final — a feat that requires submitting a strong body of work to be judge.
Now Rounds hopes to turn his talent into a career in fabric design and even fashion thanks to a partial scholarship he received from the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design.
“I’m really into queer art, advocacy art,” the 18-year-old said. “Avant-garde fashion and political activism. Admittedly, this is a very niche thing.
He chose the Rhode Island School of Design in part because the school emphasizes finding ways to earn a living through art.
“Their goal is to create an employable space for yourself,” he said.
Until the start of the pandemic, Rounds was doing traditional two-dimensional art. But the shutdown, which cut him off from his art studio in high school, forced him to think creatively with the few resources he had at home.
“When I finally got into my groove in art, the world stopped,” he said. “But it was pretty cool, isolated in myself.”
He began digitizing his drawings and then completing them in graphic design programs.
“It’s so cool to see how you can expand what you can do physically. I’ll paint something first and then I’ll go paint on it digitally,” he said. “It elevates what you can paint with your hands.”
Then it prints the new version and adds more by hand. At first it was his only way to create the images he had in mind.
“Then I really liked the style and stuck with it,” he said.
For his AP art portfolio, he decided to take risks. Last week, he learned he was one of the few to get a perfect score.
By then, of course, he was already at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he plans to major in clothing design.
“I can turn any of my art into prints and textiles. I have over a hundred designs in a book just waiting to be made,” he said.
First of all, the design school requires him and all first-year students to do a year of what’s called groundwork. He spends eight hours a day, three days a week, in the art studio.
“I love it,” he said. “It’s amazing. We just stay in the studio, from breakfast to dinner. There’s something otherworldly about seeing your artistic identity develop over the course of the day.