High School Visual Arts

The Upper School Visual Arts faculty believe that the arts are a critical and essential part of the education of every young person and seeks to provide every student with high-quality, studio art experiences at any stage of development and background.

Such an experience should occur both in and out of classroom settings as part of a habitual and continuous discipline that includes art-looking, art-making, art-thinking, and art-critiquing.

We challenge students to find their own voice and pace through risk-taking, perseverance, experimentation, and independent self-study. In the classroom and through critiques, students learn that there are no wrong answers, that problems can have more than one solution and multiple perspectives and that purpose can change with circumstance and opportunity.

We educate our students to:

• Experiment and develop progressive mastery of new media and techniques
• Observe and use observation skills to interpret the world and make marks or build something to express them
• Create a sense of depth and the illusion of form in two-dimensional pieces
• Mix media together to create a new piece of artwork
• Take a concept from beginning brainstorming and thumbnail sketches and follow through with revisions/reworking/reflection and then to take it to a personally completed stage
• Be able to work in both abstract and representational styles of art
• Compose, revise, and write an Artist Statement
• Use technology to make art or which contributes to art making in some way
• Make personally expressive and original artwork
• Critique one’s own and others’ artwork in a constructive manner.

Visual Arts Course Offerings