Ava Garay enjoys exploring vast world of art
Manteca High senior Ava Garay is a standout artist whose creativity is matched by her versatility.
By MOISES RAMOS
The Tower
Manteca High senior Ava Garay was recently accepted into her dream school — Silicon Valley University — to further her education in digital art and animation.
Silicon Valley is a school focused on digital animation, video games design and audio and music production, and was recently ranked among the top-20 colleges with game design programs by U.S. News and World Reports.
It’s a place with many programs and resources for Garay, one of three siblings enrolled at Manteca High, to continue her career in digital art and animation.
“I hope to learn more about anatomy. I want to learn all of the programs that they're going to have with the digital art. I also hope to work with clay because they have this huge clay room and it's going to be so cool,” Garay said.
Garay is a talented and versatile artist. She can work with any art medium and craft amazing pieces, including audio and video for the school’s Video Production program.
“She's just a really prolific and talented young artist,” Manteca High art teacher Bobby Latona said. Garay is in Latona’s Advanced Art class. “She can work three dimensionally, she can work with colored pencils, with acrylic paint. She just really excels in all the different mediums and is always willing to try different things. … Her content and the idea behind her work is very powerful and thoughtful.”
One of Manteca High senior Ava Garay’s goals is to learn to draw the human anatomy more precisely and accurately. She looks forward to studying this subject more in the fall when she attends Silicon Valley University.
Garay’s former art teacher Jiana Boudreaux gushed about the senior’s versatility and unique creativity.
“Ava Garay is one of those students that no matter what she does, it’s going to be the most adorable thing ever. She made these cute clay pieces in my class — and it wasn’t even an assignment,” Boudreaux said. “She’s one of those students that’s always going to standout even if it’s in making videos, making clay or painting. Her work is going to standout, and they are uniquely hers.”
Since she was a child, Garay has been inspired by her father to become an artist.
“My dad would teach me how to draw a lion or a cat or a horse just for fun,” she said. “And I got into it more, I started drawing all the time, making random characters.”
Garay has also loved working with clay.
“I used to play with Play-Doh all the time when I was little,” she said. “And then I just started getting into clay more and more and it just really interests creating stuff like that.”
One of the things Garay loves most about art is the creative process and seeing the progress she’s made over the years, especially when it comes to drawing humans or anime.
“I like drawing humans, which is sometimes mostly anime,” she said. “I'm trying to get more into (drawing) anatomy. So, I want to learn about the human anatomy and how to actually draw them properly.”