STUDENT LIFE: VISUAL ARTS

“When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college- that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, "You mean they forget?" Howard Ikemoto

Academy students do not “forget” art because our program respects and enhances each child’s individual creative expression. This encourages imagination, confidence, and a willingness to experiment with artistic forms.

In the Pre-K and Kindergarten, art is interwoven throughout class activities to expose the young artists to a variety of different mediums from finger painting to play-dough sculptures. These young artists rip paper, glue, roll clay, experiment with paint brushes and use crayons and markers.

Lower School students visit the Art Barn, a ceramic studio with two kilns and a large workroom that is used for creating three-dimensional art works. The Art Barn has an adjacent garden for outdoor art exhibits. Lower School art work is on display throughout Alumni Hall and during special exhibits in Haugen Hall.

Middle and Upper School art students work in a vast array of mediums and forms including photography, videography, sculpture, mosaic, collage, pastels, water color, oils, computer graphics, graphic design, metal work and leather craft. Classes include components studies of art history as it relates to specific artists and forms.

Upper School art offerings use innovative approaches to traditional art history courses: one elective includes weekend trips to New York City museums and a studio project based on a Western masterpiece. Another course challenges students to superimpose the works of the masters on found objects. Academy artists frequently leave the Haugen Hall art studio to paint, draw or photograph outdoors on the school’s 12-acre campus.