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Tag Archives: Studio Art
Drawing a Blank! Lessons from Studio I Art Class
By Mrs. Barbara Putnam & Her Studio I Class
Drawing a Blank! Lessons from Studio I Art Class
What is it like to see with eyes that learn to notice everything, including what is in between bits of information? What about trying to draw with your non-dominant hand? These are two assignments for Studio I students. Whether you have never risked drawing or have taken many art courses, it is worth remembering what it is like to begin in any discipline.
Frances Hornbostel ‘21
In the first assignment, “Hard Lines,” students learned that different line widths communicate differently in how we perceive not only a shape but also how “gray” it is. Each student had to randomly pencil out areas to explore these line types while leaving several shapes “blank” or white. One of the areas needed to be drawn directly in felt tip pen with the non-dominant hand… which means that it will be permanent because pen is not erasable. Shaky lines remind us of what it was like when we first began to hold a pencil years ago and how your brain needed to communicate instructions over and over to get your hand to “work.” The white spaces tell us that a shape can be made by the end points of other lines, which is a concept lifted from Geometry.
Painting the Underwater Protected “Ocean Park”
By Nicola Hartmann, U Jin Jo, Filip Kierzenka, Ivy Li, and Lucy Martinson, IV Form & Sean Farrell, Paula Hornbostel, Helen Huang, Paige LaMalva, Aidana Maitekova, Isabelle O’Toole, Illia Rebechar, and Sophie Student, III Form
Painting the Underwater Protected “Ocean Park”
Map of National Monument. 150 miles SouthEast of Cape Cod: 4, 913 square miles.
On September 15, 2016, President Obama designated the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument (map right) to be the Atlantic Ocean’s first underwater protected area. Open to recreational fishing and phasing out commercial fishing will make this area, the size of Connecticut, a valuable research area and refuge for marine life. Dr. Scott Krauss, senior advisor and scientist at the New England Aquarium, was instrumental in securing this area of crucial habitats with 1,000-year-old deep sea corals, unique characteristics of three canyons — deeper than the Grand Canyon — and four deepwater seamounts — 13,000 feet from the ocean floor. Protected from oil, gas exploration, and overfishing, scientists will be able to observe and understand changes. The marked area will help preserve rare and endangered corals, fish, invertebrates, turtles, and three species of whale.
Students in Studio I made this new protected space their area of investigation. (more…)
The Mask: Art Inspired By The Loss of My Grandfather
By U Jin Jo, IV Form
The Mask: Art Inspired By The Loss of My Grandfather
“Do you ever wish you could just take off your mask and show people what is going on inside of you?”
I have been asked this question multiple times before. However, I never really understood what it meant before I experienced the death of someone whom I loved. In fact, his absence is still hard to believe today.
My grandfather – my best friend, my mentor, my everything – passed away two years ago when I was in 7th grade. The pain of the loss was unbearable for my 13-year-old self. However, having to tough through each day of school, I maintained the bright smile on my visage and carried my sadness within me. Day after day, I became more tired of burying my feelings inside. Eventually, I could no longer hold back the tears that flooded inside of me. I needed to show people what was going inside of U Jin Jo.
For this piece of art, I wanted the background to be important without having too much information because I wanted the focus to be on the inside. Hence, I used red acrylic paint and created a gradation behind the person. For the hair, I used a black felt-tip pen for the hair-like patterns. Under the mask of the girl, I wanted the section to express an entirely different feeling than the rest of the page because it is the focus of this piece. I looked through fashion magazines and cut out images of thunderstorms, clouds, and tears to create an ominous collage. Everything else was done in pencil. (more…)
Voice in Guitar and in Literature…and in Me
By Shep Greene, VI Form
Voice in Guitar and in Literature…and in Me
The guitar is an integral part of who I am. As my skill has progressed, I’ve seen my appreciation and understanding of music progress as well. Over this past year, I began to delve into a more abstract form of music in improvisation. Within this form of my guitar playing, I began to find striking similarities between music and literature. Imagine every note as a letter and every note coming together to form a riff, with all of the respective letters coming together as one word. By the end of a piece, just as by the end of a novel, you’ll have a powerful message to send out to your listeners and readers. (more…)
Drawing on Our Brains: How Neuroscience and Art Can Teach Us About Learning
By Gabe Brower, VI Form
Drawing on Our Brains: How Neuroscience and Art Can Teach Us About Learning
I have yet to meet a single student at Saint Mark’s that has never crammed for an exam. They fill up their brain temporarily with information for an upcoming test in a vain attempt to not fall flat on their face the next day during their test. To be honest, it sometimes “works”, as defined by a good score, and I can speak from experience in this area. However, that doesn’t mean cramming is effective. It is the result of disengaged students and ineffective teaching methods that culminates in temporary information retention, and over the long run the crammed information isn’t retained. Therefore, no valuable learning takes place. (more…)
Sketches Under the Hot Sun
By Kennedy Petties, IV Form
Sketches Under the Hot Sun
I completed four sketches this summer on 18 by 24 paper, with 2 on black paper in color and 2 on white paper in shaded pencil. I worked on it for Studio 3 this year as a IVth Former. It was a concentration on globalization and how I defined it. I define globalization as the interconnection of ideas, people, and places. It’s like social networking for beliefs and worldly progress and history. I took things from my everyday life, in this case automobiles and their breakdown, and had to express them within the parameters of the assignment. The structure of a car, and how each part is from somewhere else and then put together to create something to take you anywhere else, is amazing to me.
My Exploration in Printmaking on a Scroll
By Grace Barron, V Form
My Exploration in Printmaking on a Scroll
To turn a single, or in my case double, print into a lengthy scroll (h 82″ X w 40″), my first step was to print out large quantities of both blocks in different shades of purple. Before it came to all of that, I had to have an original print. For the original assignment, the Advanced Studio class went to the Wesley greenhouses, drew from life, and created a print based on our drawings. An experimental print assignment then followed. Looking at my single print, I noticed that the mirrored prints in a scroll would have an effect that would allow the viewer’s eyes to follow a path. While I first looked for a gradient effect with the top prints being the lightest and the bottom prints the darkest, I decided to scratch the idea and make the piece follow more of a random pattern. I laid out the prints and arranged them in a way that I liked and then glued them to a large piece of paper. I wanted the viewer to see almost a scalloped effect. (Go to bottom of this page to see a larger rendering). (more…)
Northern Pacific Seastar Asterias amurensis & My Zone as an Artist
By Mei-Mei Arms, III Form
Northern Pacific Seastar Asterias amurensis & My Zone as an Artist
(See larger image below)
This seastar originated in Japan, Korea, China and Russia, about 20-40 metres deep off the coasts of these countries. It was introduced by the ballast waters of cargo ships as they returned from these countries and used ocean water to replace the weight of cargo. They can reproduce without the aid of another sea star and can multiply in the thousands. Due their rough exterior, the Northern Pacific Seastar does not have many natural enemies. Their larvae are so small that we cannot find a way to capture them and nothing appears to eat them at that stage in their life cycle. The Sea stars eat crustaceans and due to their numerous population, when they enter a new area, their numbers can wipe out the whole population of crustaceans. They can break off limbs and these limbs can grow in to new Sea Stars, but this process does take years. (more…)
LEO 