Painting

This course will explore a variety of painting media, including Watercolor, Tempera, Gauche, Mixed Media, Acrylic, and Oil. Students will examine several different styles and techniques and learn about a sampling of the most famous painters of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Students may choose to purchase materials in additional to those provided by the school.

Van Gogh's Starry Night... in CRAYON!

Students examine values and analyze facets in these still lives

Students explore abstract expressionism and artists like Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollack.

Like VanGogh, these oil pastels, use only complimentary colors.

A challenging assignment is a Georgia O'Keefe style flower.


Monochromatic watercolor

Above, limited-palette self-portraits. Below, abstract-shape analysis.

Senior Portfolio and advanced students excel in self-directed assignments.

Ceramics

Ceramics will provide students with a conceptual and manual foundation in the field of ceramics. Students will learn the properties of clay, its preparation, hand and wheel techniques, surface design, firing methods, fundamental ceramic terms, principles of design and introductory ceramics history. Students will also be oriented in safe practices of the ceramic artist. Emphasis will be on developing skills appropriate to the beginning student for the purpose of creative expression and technical understanding of the clay as medium

Two of the first skills students develop are creating pinch-pots and coil pots.
With slab-construction techniques, students can create a variety of vessels and structures including "ginger-bread" houses.



An emphasis is put on gesture or manorisms when working with the human figure.


Four of the challenge projects during this semester class include hands, shoes, skulls, and faces.




One of the funnest projects is faux food!

Sculpture and 3D

This course will explore the unique application, elements and principles of design to three-dimensional space. ‘While learning about sculptors through out art history, students will explore a variety of media styles of 3-D. Students will experiment with additive and subtractive methods of production and will work with both relief, and in-the-round.

After being introduced to "How Are You Peeling? Foods with Moods" by Saxton Freymann and Joost Elffers, students created their own vegetable sculptures.

This cubist foam core sculpture is similar to several Picassos

Paper mâché and plaster casting are as much a challenge as they are fun.

Introduction to Art (9-12)

This class is designed for the student interested in learning more about art prior to graduation, but who was unable to take Drawing. Through lecture, classroom exercises, and projects students will be introduced to the visual elements and principles of design. Students will learn about the four disciplines of art; aesthetics, art history, art criticism, and art production. All students must have either this course or introduction or Drawing prior to any other art class.

Line, texture and optical illusions

Students are introduced to the concept of abstraction. In this assignment, they are asked to gradually abstract an image in stages, from only slightly stylized, to almost non-objective.


High school students are sometimes re-introduced to concepts from middle school, but are expected to produce a high caliber work.




Since Introduction to Art is a survey class, students have an opportunity to be exposed to clay too.

Middle School Art

Middle school students are introduced to the elements of design and a number of 19th and 20th century artist and movements. They are exposed to a variety of media in this one-quarter long exploratory class.After studying values (shading) and Photo-Realist painter Chuck Close, students are given a photograph of themselves and a grid to enlarge it onto.

Students studied about shapes and Henri Matisse's book of cut-papers, "Jazz," then they illustrate stories or myths.

While studying color theory, students were challenged to create a self-portrait using oil pastels and only two complimentary colors and black and white.

Students learned about cartoonist Charles Schultz and pop artist Roy Liechtenstein, then they enlarged and painted comic strip panels.

Students magnify flowers like American regionalist Georgia O'Keefe, this is a good exercise both in composition and values too.


One of the uses of the element of line, is "cross-contour" lines, which model around objects.

Daddaism lends itself nicely to learning about juxtaposing images, shape, and texture in these magazine mosaics and collages.