The art studio classes teach skills used to create two-dimensional and three-dimensional art, employing a variety of materials and techniques and focusing on repeated artistic practice and process. The language of art composition – color, value, line, form, shape, balance, rhythm, and movement – is explored and practiced through abstract and representational projects. Students use various drawing and painting materials, collage, printmaking, clay, found objects, and wire.
Some projects are designed to isolate the formal elements of composition, dealing with a non-objective language of color, line and shape to create interesting and successful compositions. Other projects, specific to problems of representation, focus solely on training the eye and hand to work together to re-present the subject in a specific medium. Most projects combine these two approaches with, of course, each student’s own creativity and imagination.
Rigorous instruction is always balanced with more playful projects. Collage, abstract painting and hand-building with clay are used to focus on different skills, while simultaneously allowing the students more freedom of expression, experimentation and artistic play. Projects using the specific style of an artist give the students different and exciting guidelines for creating their own work. The class is always open to the changing dynamic and ability of each individual and of the class as a whole.