Hour by Hour: Fine Arts at Flint Hill

Humans process their feelings through the arts, develop empathy through the arts and understand unique perspectives through the arts. It’s no wonder fine arts are a pillar of Flint Hill’s JK through 12 curriculum. The skills established and molded in performing and visual arts learning spaces are skills students carry with them throughout their educational journey and beyond.

Flint Hill offers 72 courses in various arts disciplines. Each hour, there are up to nine fine arts classes happening simultaneously.

On any given day, students are connecting in the studio and on the stage — with themselves, their classmates and the world around them.

From junior kindergarteners learning the building blocks of art making to upper schoolers curating dynamic art school portfolios, Huskies in every grade are blazing the trail as artists.

From Foundation to Appreciation

9:00 a.m.

2nd Grade Music & AP Music Theory

AP Music Theory

Lower School Music Teacher Thomas Murley knows the importance of teaching a vertically aligned music curriculum that helps students prepare for the music education they receive in all three divisions. And, alongside that curriculum, he helps students to develop skills that help them become better citizens. While teaching 2nd graders the concepts of patterns, pulse, rhythm, melody and harmony, he’s also teaching students about our shared musical heritage and the meanings behind the songs they sing, including explorations of Blues music and traditional folk songs from around the world. Learning the building blocks of music and its origins imparts a foundation from which students can derive a passion for it. Often that passion produces performers and composers. Upper Schoolers enroll in Kenneth Whitley’s AP Music Theory to expand their understanding of sight reading, advanced terminology, musical phrasing and musical composition, music history, chord structure and cadences. Students take this course as a supplement to their participation in one of our four music ensembles — band, choir, orchestra and percussion — in order to help them prepare to pursue college music majors, a process that starts with the music foundation set way back when they were students in the Lower School.

2nd Grade Music

Every Artist Has an Audience

10:00 a.m.

Portfolio Art & Filmmaking

Portfolio Art

The process of making art gives inherent value to the artist; the act of sharing art offers an undeniable value to the world. There’s a connection every artist makes with their audience that brings a deeper understanding of the human condition. In our Upper School classes of Filmmaking and Portfolio Art, teachers Catherine Huber and Nikki Brugnoli help to shift their students’ artistic process from a private one to a public one. They encourage students to keep their audience in mind as they’re creating. Filmmaking students write, shoot and edit original films that are to be screened at the Upper School Visual Arts Show and submitted to festivals and contests throughout the country. Portfolio Art students have the rigorous task of creating 10 or more outstanding pieces to include in portfolios that get reviewed by the country’s top art schools. In both classes, teachers guide students through the process of starting a conversation with their audience through their art. This unspoken conversation allows us as a community to explore who we are.

Filmmaking

Creative Confidence

11:00 a.m.

5th Grade Art & Jazz Band

5th Grade Art

Students in the Upper School Jazz Band have been playing their instrument for five to eight years. They’ve long mastered reading music and playing scales and are now learning to infuse their artistry into the music they’re making. Band Director Dereck Scott encourages his students to make connections with the music, their bandmates and the audience and to let those connections guide their improvisational choices. Fifth graders in the art studio are also encouraged to make choices based off the connections they’re making. Their teacher, Susan Yennerell, focuses on building her students’ skills and confidence to take creative risks and make the transition from following the instructions they’ve been given to setting their own art making plan. The goal is that students who take meaningful risks in the band hall and art studio will continue taking those risks to deepen their understanding of themselves and the world around them.

Jazz Band

Making It Your Own

1:00 p.m.

Middle School Chorus & Advanced Dance

What art does a singer bring to a song that’s been written and composed by someone else? A great deal! Middle School Chorus Teacher Sarah Pramstaller helps her students understand that the artistry of performance is just as important as the craft of writing and composing. Deciding how long to hold a note, how to phrase a lyric and how to blend and balance harmonies gives students the agency to impart their own interpretation to make someone else’s song their own. Dance Teacher Ariel Harper asks for the same level of interpretation from her students when teaching them to perform choreography in the dance studio. While the goal may be to follow the steps that the choreographer designed, students are always encouraged to infuse their own style and self-expression through the flow of their movements, the placement of their hands, even the expression on their faces. Performance, whether the piece is original or not, is always a creative endeavor.

Middle School Chorus

Advanced Dance

Leaning into the Unknown

2:00 p.m.

Improv & Topics in Ceramics Honors

Improv

In the introductory ceramics courses, students focus on sketching and planning out their projects and go to the wheel with the goal of creating the pot they have in mind. In the advanced course, Topics in Ceramics, Julia Cardone teaches potters that they can start a project without a set idea or design. These student artists learn to let the clay lead them and lean into whatever creative decisions emerge. Students in Jackie McLoughlin’s Improv class are also mastering the art of creating as they go. With improv, the feedback you get from your fellow performers can give a story a new direction. Both sets of student artists step out into the unknown and lean into being guided by each decision. Not knowing what’s going to happen but knowing you can get there takes practice and confidence. The best artists repeat that process enough and develop trust in their own skill level to know that no matter the way, they can create something beautiful — they can entertain an audience.

Topics in Ceramics

For the Applause

Afterschool

Major Minors & Lower School Radio Club

With a performance schedule that includes eight local and nationwide stops, the Major Minors find themselves in front of more audiences than any other Flint Hill performing ensembles. While they’re not solely here for the applause, audience satisfaction is certainly a major factor in their song selection. From the traditional Scottish song “The Parting Glass” to The Beatles classic “Because,” these singers know the value of a crowd pleaser. Speaking of pleasing crowds, the students behind the ingenious KPAW radio station are learning the art of engaging their listeners. Their audience may be a small one (parents waiting in line during Lower School pickup), but the students are intent on giving them a quality program. The station was the brainchild of Director of Fine Arts James Venhaus, who noticed the captive audience of cars, outside his window, in the carpool line. He decided the School could use their FM transmitter to go on air with a student-produced radio show. The students really enjoy creating that public content. Each week, they’re motivated by the feedback they receive of what worked and what didn’t and use that to write new material for the coming show.

Lower School Radio Club

Major Minors