April Dejon photo courtesy of Bailey Schmid

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What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the word art? Do you think of black-and-white pencil sketches, covered in eraser shavings from the errors made along the way? Or do you think art is the doodles on the back of a high school student’s college-ruled notebook? Maybe you consider art as something like a colorful, detailed mosaic hanging, reflecting light? Or do you consider art something completely different?

In actuality, art can simply be described at the expression of human creative skill and imagination. This human imagination can be spread across multiple different subject areas — drawing, music, the art of words — creating ever-changing new ideas and styles, and giving a new definition to the word art. Being skilled in most every aspect of art is something senior April Dejon has been familiar with all of her life, with her accomplishments in drawing, painting, poetry, and music.

Her visuals

Bred from a young age, senior April Dejon has always had a passion for art. With an art major mother and a father who was extremely active in music, Dejon’s creative atmosphere at home ultimately sparked her original interest in the arts.

“Ever since I was little, I was given art supplies instead of toys,” said Dejon. “I’d be inside painting rather than playing or even being outside.”

Though her art started as merely sketching Disney princesses and other children’s characters, her mother and father gave her constant praise and constructive criticism, forming her budding love for art into something that, today, is much larger than just the simple cartoons.

“I met April when I first moved here and I was always so jealous of how cool she seemed. People would always ask her to teach them how to draw because she was that good,” said senior Kat Werdan, April’s best friend since the second grade.

Dejon describes her art as big, magical, and fantastical. Though much of her art is somewhat comic style, she also has some extremely realistic and technical pieces which are mostly portraits, such as a portrait of an Edwardian style lady with a large rodent draped around her neck. In most of her work, Dejon prefers the use of female figures in her pieces, but says she has a rare few where she used males instead. She likes to use space and night often in her work, as well as complex patterns such as bold swirls and harsh lines.

Her art is strongly influenced by comic book and graphic design as well as the work of Czech painter and decorative artist Alphonse Mucha. She likes the use of different quotes, sayings and also incorporates many different unique fonts into her artwork. Usually the sayings on her painting are somewhat sharp tongued, witty, and can be somewhat whimsical. On the other hand, the sayings can be somewhat deep and thought provoking. For example, one of her pieces includes an angelic figure of a woman standing in space, with “Every single night’s a fight with my brain” written on it.

In addition to her large-scale pieces, Dejon also has formed a hobby of painting shoes. In 8th grade, she saw the trend of the Ed Hardy sneakers growing around her, and decided to start buying white Keds and constructing her own, as well as designing high heels. She started custom-painting the shoes for herself, then began designing them for her friends as well. Some examples of shoes she worked on were pink-and-white high heels, which she accented with bright-colored birds and pink feathers, as well as Alice and Wonderland-themed sneakers, which were the first sneakers she ever sold. Dejon also likes going to garage sales and finding old pieces of furniture to rework and construct into art.

As for her future plans, Dejon is set on going to art school, though she is unsure exactly which school she would like to attend. She’s interested in arts school in places out west, especially Portland, Oregon, as well as some schools closer to home, like in Milwaukee. As for careers later on, she is less certain.

“My dream job would be graphic design. I love comics,” she said, “But I have no grand delusions on what I’ll be doing with my art when I get older. I’d like to keep life simple.”

Her words

Before Writers Week during her sophomore year, Dejon had no interest in anything to do with poetry.

“My favorite academic subject in school had always been literature, but it was never anything more than that,” said Dejon.

That was until she saw American performance slam poet Buddy Wakefield, who she says inspired her to pursue poetry. Along with Wakefield, her inspirations are many other slam poets; slam poetry is a competition in which poets recite original work against other poets.

Since first hearing Wakefield, Dejon has performed at Writers Week, sharing her own original poetry.

“What I love about April’s poetry is that it is controlled, yet raw, at the same time,” said Mr. Craig Schmidt, an English teacher here at LHS.

Schmidt has been a part of Writers Week for the past four years and loves seeing the student works that come in each year. He witnessed Dejon’s performance at Writers Week and said that her work “takes great care with rhythms and imagery while, at the same time, is very vulnerable and passionate.”

As well as writing poetry, Dejon also dabbles in songwriting. She writes lyrics and covers songs, as well as plays original songs, with her friends.

“I play piano, self taught,” she said, “and I’ve always loved to sing. When I was younger, I used to walk around my house singing.”

As with her art, Dejon grew up around music. Her dad was in bands throughout his life and she grew up always singing and writing songs. Her biggest musical influence is singer-songwriter Regina Spektor, whose music falls largely under the anti-folk genre and style.

Along with Spektor’s anti-folk style, Dejon enjoys other genres, especially jazz, including artists like Fiona Apple, and rap. She often helps her friends with their music as well, and says that many of her friends are strongly influenced by those two genres.

As for her own music, Dejon describes it as “simple and chill,” with no definite genre. She says her music, like her art and poetry, follows through on her motto of “keep life simple.”