Artist of the Issue: Maya Junkins ’21

Amalia Tuchmann ’23 Assistant Arts Editor

Maya Junkins ’21, who describes her artistic style as “dark and existential,” has been profoundly influenced by the art classes she has taken at Hopkins, including Studio Art and Fine Art I, II, and III.

Throughout her time at Hopkins, Junkins has also forged close bonds with the Hopkins Art faculty, and was most impacted by Visual Art teacher Jacqueline Labelle-Young. Junkins has just completed AP Art History, which she says she “really, really loves and will possibly be continuing in the future.” She said the classes “definitely inspired [her] to do more outside of school and definitely gave [her] more materials to work with.” Junkins said she would show her Advanced Studio Arts teacher, Labelle-Young “a lot of [her] personal work in addition to just what we were doing in school.” Junkins said that Labelle-Young “really encouraged me to pursue [her personal work]. I had an Instagram account and I would show her what I was posting and she would talk to me about advice and the themes in my work.” As a result of her AP Art History class, Junkins said “I feel like I have a lot more inspiration. I especially like Baroque art and Caravaggio; a lot of stuff with high contrast that’s extremely dark.” She is also inspired by “a lot of surrealist art and some Polish artists, like Beksinski, who does a lot of really creepy and terrifying war-era art.”

At the moment, Junkins’ medium of choice is collage, an art form composed of various materials glued onto a surface. For this, she “normally uses National Geographic or other magazine cutouts, and then draws on top of them with a Sharpie.” She also enjoys working with “oils and just normal pencil sketches,” and has experimented with watercolor in the past. Her creative process for constructing collages consists of “picking one magazine and then going through and trying to find themes.” Normally she begins “with one image and then [focuses] mainly on the composition. Then I start trying to find images that will match it and kind of go with the theme and eventually build.”

Junkins said that she does “struggle a lot with motivation and inspiration.” She specifies that “It’s hard for me to actually sit down and start creating things, especially with school and the amount of work I have.” However, when faced with this challenge, Junkins said, “the inspiration that comes from taking Art History and having teachers to guide me and actually give me motivation definitely has helped me a lot.”

In addition to individual pieces, Junkins is also one of the students who collaborated on the Class of 2021 Banner this year. Of the brainstorming process for the banner, she said, “First [the seniors working on the banner] just did our own thing separately and came up with as many ideas as possible. Then we came together and we chose one idea of one person’s sketch.” Junkins said the group of students are all “taking that design and then doing our own sketch of that specific idea. And soon we’ll come together again and finalize it.”

After graduation, Junkins says she will “definitely continue taking arts classes.” She will be attending Bard College in the fall, and is “leaning towards mainly studying Art History and taking some Studio Art classes on the side,” in addition to “getting involved in any clubs that involve visual arts.” She adds that she has “a very wide range of interests so I’m still undecided about what exactly I’ll end up doing” but will “always continue doing art in my free time.

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Artist of the Issue: Maya Junkins ’21