Visual Arts

In Grade 7, each student is exposed to all art offerings: drama, music, and a three-dimensional and two-dimensional visual arts course. Each teacher focuses on a different cultural aspect of his/her discipline, culminating in an interdisciplinary (with the History Department) study of Latin America, as the students research and celebrate a Spring Carnaval.

In visual arts, students in three-dimensional art focus on sculpture in clay and on gaining an understanding of the material. Students study different cultures (e.g. Art of the Pueblo People and American Sculpture of the 20th Century) as a mode of discovering history through art.

Classes in two-dimensional art focus on drawing and painting, color-mixing, and using a variety of materials. Students connect their work to art history with projects that include still-life drawings, paintings from nature, and paintings inspired by 19th- and 20th-century artists.

In Grade 8, students participate in concentrated immersion in two semester-long arts courses that meet four times a week. Students participate in a visual arts course for one semester and performing arts course for one semester. In visual arts, choices include two-dimensional art, three-dimensional art, and electives that include wheel-thrown pottery, hand-building in clay, painting, drawing, and printmaking.