Creativity and Collaboration

Words by Kate Rivers

HEAD OF LEARNING AREA – VISUAL ARTS, HEAD OF JUNIOR ART & PRINTMAKING, DIRECTOR OF SUSTAINABILITY

Talent is a dirty word in the Art Department at Rangi Ruru, ‘talented’; is a word you will not hear in our classrooms. Deep thinking, independent decision making, taking risks, and putting in time to practice and develop both thinking and practical skills, is our proven recipe for successful artmaking.

Year 11 Art - Still Life

The exciting thing is everyone can make successful artworks when myths around talent are dispelled; follow the recipe and the results speak for themselves! Evidence of this can be seen when senior art students teach drawing, painting and printmaking classes for staff. By breaking down drawing into scaffolded steps, our Principal, Business Manager, teachers administration and support staff, produce stunning, well observed and well resolved artworks. Like many of our students in their first year at Rangi, most of these staff genuinely believed they could not draw. Like our students, they all discover they can!

Rangi’s Visual Art Faculty have inspired, challenged and empowered students with this recipe and our philosophy for the past twenty years. In this time, eight students from the faculty have been awarded Top Scholar in New Zealand and numerous girls have gained NCEA scholarships and outstanding scholarship.

Junior camera scultures and profiles

Every year since NCEA began, Visual Arts students have gained scholarships, with a single faculty contributing significantly to school results overall, year after year. Level 1-3 NCEA results are consistently outstanding across Visual Arts subjects, with very high rates of Excellence Endorsement.

‘Hei a koe te tikanga’ meaning ‘You’re the boss’ is our motto in the Art Department. Students drive their own independent research and inquiry learning from Year 10, allowing each girl to develop an individual programme based on her interests and stylistic approach.

Working collaboratively, sharing ideas and peer critique underlies all we do. As a community of learners, we support each other and celebrate successes together. Once a week, at the end of the day, large numbers of girls from Years 7-13 flock to after school extension art classes run by senior students, to learn alongside each other and develop friendships. Having students teach others provides leadership opportunities and allows our seniors to flourish and gain confidence in their own ability as a leader.

We celebrate our Rangi old girls by supporting their businesses, attending their exhibitions, book launches, going to their galleries, reading their reviews and PHD research, buying magazines they have been involved in, connecting with them online, going to their film screenings, inviting them to speak to classes, wearing clothes they have designed, visiting their studios with classes, seeing buildings they have designed, attending lectures they present, having them as our Artist in Residence and generally showing an interest in their careers. Sharing stories on the various roles these women play in our society and seeing their works in our extensive art book collection, inspires our current students.

Showing work is an integral part of artmaking and this is encouraged at Rangi. All senior students have learning on display to inspire others. This shows we value independent thinking and all stylistic approaches. It also signals we value the learning process and journey as much as the finished outcome. It opens up possibilities for our juniors and shows the calibre of practice and expectations of this area and shows where our course could take them. Critique notes are pinned to walls and staff from different subject areas contribute to ideas. When artmaking is not private, but a public affair, more people can be involved in helping with ideas and solutions to problems allowing students to feel supported.

Exhibitions provide an opportunity for our wider community to view and celebrate learning. Our annual One Day Art Display is a visual feast of finished portfolios. Year 10 students have their artist’s books exhibited in the Baird Gallery each year and the student run Art Committee curate shows as part of the Performing Arts Showcase.

Staff members have also enjoyed successes in art in the last year with Melissa Macleod winning the Zonta Art Award and Kate Rivers selected to represent NZ and Te Wai Pounamu in International Printmaking exhibitions in Hong Kong and Australia. Creating a positive culture, a negativity free zone, and an environment where students are encouraged to think independently and feel safe to make mistakes and question assumptions, is important to us. We believe we equip young women with a repertoire of skills they will need in the future, regardless of their profession.