STUDIO & STAGE

Visual Art in the Upper School

Imagine an expansive light-filled studio where, on any given day, a student is disassembling a bicycle wheel so she can stretch primed canvas over it before clamping it in place with the tube and tire. Nearby, another is cutting into his painted canvas and carefully stitching it back together. On the opposite side of the studio, a student is grinding rich tones of natural pigments with gum arabic to make her own set of homemade watercolors.

As music plays in the background, another student might be carefully burning through a stack of matchboxes, rendering a landscape of devastated trees by drawing with the tips of one match after another. Nearby, a classmate might be folded over her watercolor painting, painstakingly stitching beads along the edge of a poppy pod while one of her peers precisely coils her delicate watercolor and ink drawings before inserting them into large test tubes.

This is Art 2 and 3. Largely studentdriven, the inquiry-based curriculum is a deliberate, thoughtful, and researched fusion of best practices drawn from time-tested tenets of art education, postmodern principles of design, and the Advanced Placement (AP) Framework. Though not an AP course, the combined sections of Art 2 and 3 have enthusiastically embraced the framework as “banks for their rivers” to quote Iona Drozda, a locally based artist and educator whose work was recently shown in Perrel Gallery as part of the Growing Together exhibition.

Student choice is essential to this learning context, in which all students choose a theme to guide their yearlong “Extended Investigations.” In the former framework model, this theme was mapped as the center of a wheel from which 12 static spokes — individual works of art — emanated. The new model visualizes the extended investigation as a tree trunk whose branches — the individual works — grow organically as the exploration proceeds.

Throughout the experience, students focus on the following as determined by the needs of their investigation: technical skill-development, practice, experimentation, revision (either to the way they are working or to previous work), and materials and processes that are physically and metaphorically related to their theme. Hence, the need for bike wheels, stitched canvas, homemade watercolors, matchstick drawings, beads, and test tubes as these students investigate such topics as homes away from home, mental wellness, the natural world, cultural stereotypes, and so much more.

With this approach, the teacher becomes fellow researcher, guide, and coach, directing students to materials and other resources, demonstrating, brainstorming, and providing inspiration via the rich territory of artists working today. Classes often begin with a slide to provide context, a short video about a contemporary artist, and brief discussion afterwards. What resonates? What serves as a “takeaway”? Because our curriculum is structured to parallel the way artists actually work in the 21st century, we cast the net wide, experiencing the likes of Lesley Dill, Do Ho Suh, and Kehinde Wiley, all of whom, among other things, match materials and/or processes to the themes of their work because, as Canadian communications theorist Marshall McLuhan famously wrote, “The medium is the message.”

How to measure success in such a creative context? Formally assessed benchmarks are as objective as possible, drawing upon written reflection and self-assessment. Students are asked to assess themselves and comment upon the degree to which they have demonstrated technical skill, practice, experimentation, revision, and the selection of materials and processes that undergird their themes.

For its part, Art 1 is a dynamic course offered as a “stand-alone” or as the foundation for continued achievement in Art 2 and 3. Students in this course eagerly embrace everything that comes their way as they are challenged to work in a range of media with a breadth of both design- and content-based goals and objectives. The flow is more teacher-driven than Art 2 and 3, yet students are nonetheless strongly encouraged and supported as they find their individual voices within guidelines that broaden over time.

Every day in Visual Art, we pack our bags for destinations unknown and, though we have a roadmap, we crave the detours. ◆

Betsy DiJulio teaches art in the Upper School and is an artist and freelance writer whose work was recently included in the MOCA exhibit “Nourish.”

OPPOSITE TOP: Watercolor, ink, and beads by Claire Vu ’22. OPPOSITE BOTTOM: Watercolor and ink tunnel book by Eliza Blythe ’22. TOP LEFT: Biographical Botanicals—exploring plants that symbolize the artists. TOP RIGHT: Theory of Eternal Recurrence by Quinn Carroll ’23.