What is art really? Exeter-Milligan K-12 art students decided this year that art is so much more than drawing, painting and sculpting. If you look at art schools, they offer every kind of career from graphic design, interior design, fashion design, web design, animation production and photographer just to name a few. So at EM we decided we should call ourselves, “CREATIVE DESIGNERS” covering all art related categories and giving us a reason to decorate and recycle used CDs (compact discs) to give the art room an adventurous and inviting vibe. All students that came into the art room designed their own CDs to make the backsplash complete. This is just one of the areas in the art room that was hit with the kids’ creativity.
Some of the creative things this year’s art students are doing include invention designs by the 4th grade, galaxy collages by the 3rd grade, mosaic sea creatures by the 2nd grade, and the 1st graders learned a little about folk art while making their own freestyle trees using swirling lines. The kindergarten has made the most enjoyable Veteran’s Day pictures, as well as leaf rubbings with fingerprint pumpkins and prehistoric chalk landscapes with dinosaurs roaming the earth.
A new adventure for art this year has been with a combined class of designers that have decided to invite the elementary classes in one Friday a month to give them an extra art enrichment. This class is made up of 1st and 3rd year art students along with journalism students. In September we had 1st and 3rd grade come in to do shadow drawings and nature print (cyanotype) pictures. In October, we had the Kindergarten and 4th graders in to watch a pottery wheel demonstration and they were able to make embossed platters out of clay. This month the 2nd and 5th graders are going to join us to make origami which is a Japanese paper folding technique. It has been great to see the high school students work side by side with the elementary this year. I see the growth and learning taking place among all of them on so many levels!
An easy way to see what the students are doing in art would be to walk the halls of EM, mostly activity entrance and elementary. Also you can check out student work on our online gallery at https://www.artsonia.com/schools/school.asp?id=36412