My 1 page artist Spread

We’ve all seen her in the hallways, laughing and talking to her friends but do we really know Kira? I’m sure some of you do, but there’s always more to learn. For those of you who don’t know Kira, she is an 8th grader at our school, Cab Calloway. She’s a vocal major and a piano/opera minor. Although after school, she participates in photography club, as well. Kira is a very talented girl. She sings mezzo soprano, which means she is between a soprano and an alto. “I have a relatively large range,” she says, “I was trying to convince Mr. Lassman I was a tenor for a while, but that didn’t work out so well.” Kira has recorded about ten of her own songs, but has many more that are written and left un-recorded. She says she enjoys being a vocal major most of the time except that it gets kind of boring sometimes. She says she would like to be in Communication Arts as well, but she’d prefer to stay in vocal for the time being. Communication Arts is Kira’s second choice for majors in high school. Kira can write amazing poetry, also. So with he singing, piano-playing, poetry, and photography Kira fits in perfectly at Cab Calloway School of the Arts.
Kira’s photography and poetry is what I remember her the most by. She has had a full display of ten of her photographs in the hallway that leads to the library from the lobby. My favorite picture from that display is one of two blue high-tops sitting on a black doorstep. The fall colors contrast nicely with the blue of the sneakers. “My favorite picture that I've taken is currently hanging in the window type-thing in the nurse's hallway. It's of the sky, and the school is framing the sky at the bottom,” says Kira, “ but it's a really great combination of construction and nice new windows, and it's a really good representation of Cab, I think, because it's old and new.” She takes all her pictures with two different cameras, a Nikon Coolpix and an older camera that was her dad’s, a Nikon D2. “My photography is pretty much just me saying ‘hey world, I wish you could see things the way I see them’,” Kira told me.

Her poetry has its own kind of feel to it. Most of her poems are dark or Goth-y but sometimes they involve love in a slightly twisted way. For as long as I’ve known Kira, she is always writing poetry in the middle of her classes and asking me to read them for her. In 7th grade, during science class, she wrote a poem that is untitled currently and it goes like this:


Emotions are just chemicals
Tumultuous and strange
So why is it that seeing you
Can do this to my brain?

My heart is beating faster now
It's racing in my chest
I don't want to turn from you and leave
I know it's for the best.

If feelings are all chemicals
That course throughout my head
Then why is it my mind is full
Of thoughts of you instead?


I know you'll wrap your arms around me
The next time i see you
You'll tell me that you love me and
I’ll say it isn't true

For by and by I've learned to just
Leave well enough alone
But the next time I get lonely
I might still pick up the phone

My heart still melts to butter when
I look into your eyes
But emotions are just chemicals
And chemicals are lies.


“My poems are also a lot about how I express myself, because if I just told everyone how I saw things then it wouldn't really be art,” is what Kira says. I completely agree with that statement. When I asked Kira why she writes she said that she sometimes gets into random moods that make her take photos and write for hours. She says she could write a good twenty pages of poetry in an hour if she felt like it.
Kira’s photography is well-planned but artistic as well. It’s expressive and abstract. Looking through her photo’s you might get mixed signals about what kind of photographer Kira is. Either way, though, you know that her photography is moving and can help you see things her way. Her poetry is amazing as well. It’s deep and intellectual. A lot of her poems really make me think about my views on certain topics.