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“Art is not what you see, it’s what you make others see.” -Edgar Degas

Middle School Art class

The seventh and eighth grade students learned many new artistic concepts and skills in the seven week term. They created two major projects; one was a realistic landscape oil pastel drawing inspired by legendary Post-Impressionist Vincent Van Gogh and the second project was a painting inspired by Surrealist Joan Miro.

For the first project, students chose a photograph of a natural landscape in Taiwan and employed the Post-Impressionist style of using vibrant color combinations and drawing with short dashed lines. The students added their own interpretation of ‘Van Gogh’ swirls into the colorful skies of their drawings to show movement and emotion.

For the second project, we studied the paintings from Joan Miro’s Constellation Series and created our own unique and personal constellation paintings. At first, students abstracted favorite characters from their childhood into surreal drawings. They spray painted patterns onto paper as the initial layer and then traced and painted their abstracted characters as a second layer. We engaged in discussions analyzing the artworks of the master artists as well as critiqued our work as a group throughout the project process. Students also learned about the lives of these two famous artists in both historical and cultural contexts.

Not only was the process a fun and engaging learning experience but the outcomes of both projects were beautiful! The students were so proud of their finished masterpieces.

2011-2012

Van Gogh’s Taiwan project: Surreal Constellations project:

MIDDLE SCHOOL&HIGH SCHOOL

High School Art class

This has been a productive and creatively enriching year for the High School Art class. As the High School Art class functions an art foundation class, the students are able to experiment with a variety of media and learn about many inspiring artists. It’s truly incredible to see how much each and every one of the students artistically grows in just one year. Highlighted below are a few of our favorite projects completed this past year.

Scratchboard Carving

This project involved both photography and scratchboard carving. We specifically studied the interplay between positive and negative space and the visual effects of high contrast. We began by learning the basic rules of photo composition and took a photo walk around the school grounds. Students photographed both manmade and natural subject matter from interesting viewpoints. They edited their favorite photos using the editing program Gimp and then translated their best photo into a scratchboard drawing. The attention to detail in the scratchboard drawings was truly incredible and demonstrated the high level of artistic skill of KAS students.

Artist Trading Cards

Both the HS Art and IB Art classes participated in what will hopefully be an annual cultural exchange from this year onward. We paired up with East Palo Alto Phenix Academy in Palo Alto, California, and exchanged Artist Trading Cards with the high school art students there. The challenge for both groups of students was that the card had to visually communicate a part of their cultural or personal background onto a surface the size of a baseball trading card. They also wrote letters to introduce themselves to their artist pen-pals and received some gorgeous and poetic cards in return from the students in California. It was a fantastic exchange experience for everyone involved!

IB Visual Arts class

The Year 1 IB Art students investigated and explored several themes while experimenting with a wide variety of media in this first year. From the very beginning, these students have formed a strong learning community and have pushed one another to develop their artistic voice and improve upon their ideas and techniques.

Surrealistic Me

We began our digital art unit with Surreal self portraits. The KAS HS art classes participated in a collaborative project with schools around the world called, ‘Surrealistic Me’. Selected artworks will be printed in a book where proceeds will fund an organization to help orphans in Malawi. The project challenge was for students to show who they are as individuals in a surreal and dreamy way. We learned about the surrealistic operational techniques to help us get into the groove of Surrealism. Salvador Dali’s paintings were a major inspiration in this unit. As a class, we analyzed many of his bizarre artworks and learned about his life.

The students used the photo editing program Gimp and juxtaposed and spliced numerous photos together to create their self-portraits. Each portrait tells a poetic story about the artist that made it. These projects are testament to the expressive power and storytelling potential in the visual arts.

Sacred Space Pt.1

One of our units focused on the theme, ‘Sacred Space’. We learned about the purpose of sacred spaces in various cultures as well as common architectural characteristics in places of worship. The students took a photography field trip to visit the temples around Lotus Lake and captured images of sacred space within the Taoist and Buddhist context of Taiwan. After a few photo critiques and many study sketches later, the students created some beautiful mixed media paintings inspired by the photos they took of the temple, capturing the essence of what they experienced while visiting the temples.

Sacred Space Pt.2

The second part of this unit invited the students to look inward and ask themselves what was scared to them. Where did they find their own ‘sacred space’? The students came up with many different interpretations and searched for poetic meaning in the spaces and places that gave them a sense inner peace. Again, they created mixed media paintings on panel inspired by these personal spaces. The Sacred Space unit demonstrates the saying, “If the artwork is truly personal to you, it will be personal to others as well.”

Activist Art

Because of the high interest in street art in this class, we delved into a unit on Activist/Protest Art. We studied works by contemporary artists like Banksy, Barbara Kruger and Shepard Fairy but also looked back in history to the Dada artists like John Heartfield and Hanna Hoch. We asked ourselves why, how and what in the context of this overarching theme. Why have issues of conflict and protest been expressed in art for centuries? How does protest art reflect the society and time it was created in? What do I personally care about enough to make a passionately fueled artwork about what I believe is right or wrong in the world? Needless to say, this unit brought up great questions which led to research, sharing and group discussion.

The artwork that came out of this unit was highly imaginative, thought-provoking and expressed strong opinions towards relevant global issues.

IB Visual Arts Exhibition

KAS hosted its very first IB Visual Arts Exhibition on April 13, 2012.  Many friends, family and teachers came out to support the six IB Art seniors on this very special evening. It was incredible to see the depth and breadth each exhibiting artist demonstrated in their body of work. Each student had developed a unique artistic voice, vision and point of view since stepping into the art classroom two years ago.

The exhibit was held in the conference room, which was completely rearranged to become a gallery space with display boards and professional lighting. We had a delicious spread of snacks and drinks for our visiting art patrons to enjoy while viewing the artwork. Our own Tina Hung designed the art brochures, which many friends and family kept as a souvenir.

The energy was buzzing around the room with mouths open in awe at what these six young ladies had created. As each student worked within a personally chosen theme, each body of work reflected her personality, individuality and aesthetic. Every piece of artwork in the room told a story, and it was wonderful for the IB Art students to share it all with an appreciative audience.

The IB Art Seniors (from left to right): Isabelle, Connie, Tina, Jenny, Jamie and Helena