Where the wild things are
landscape art exhibition Nov. 3rd 2016
Landscape painting with Mr. Walker
chalk the (wet)block 2016
Chalk the Block was a wet disaster this year. The students didn't care, but were happy to be out of school doing what they love.
AP Art trip to bryce canyon 2016
Teacher and Student Reflections from the trip:
My husband and I packed in a truckload of camping gear and three students into our vehicle and headed out on a three hour drive to Bryce Canyon, followed by a second car with four additional students. We left on Thursday morning and would be gone till Saturday. I had no idea how this was going to go. All of my students came from various walks of life, had different value systems, and very different personalities. Some loved the outdoors and some had never been camping before.
When we arrived we set up camp and then headed for the rim with our large bins of art supplies. This is what we had been wanting to do all year and we were finally going to have a “paint out.” Little did we know when we sat down on the dirt at the edge of the canyon we wouldn’t get back up for four hours. They loved every minute of it and were so engrossed with what they were viewing and making. It was silent the entire time, except for the occasional passerby who wanted to inquire and peak over their shoulders to see what they were making. As a teacher, I couldn’t stop grinning because I had taken the leap and brought them to a place where they could find real meaning and wholeness. This environment nurtured all of those philospophies I had studied.
That evening we took a hike down into the hoodoos and I watched them bond together as they held hands to assist each other, told jokes, and shared stories. We ended up climbing out of the amphitheater at night. We stopped along the trail and everyone just laid down and stared at the sky. It is my favorite teaching moment by far as I listened to them gasp everytime one of them spotted a shooting star. They could have laid there forever, undisturbed in the night staring at the Milky Way. In that moment they were making those deep connections to the earth and the sky, to each other, and with me. We really were in it together.
The students learned to work together and care for one another as we prepared meals, sat around campfires, and walked…a lot. We took them on a seven mile hike the following day and they would need each other to survive it. We had studnets who ran out of water early on and they eventually rationed out all of their water so that everyone stayed hydrated, even it meant only a cap full. You talk a lot and with various people depending on how well you were feeling and how tired your legs were. We gave each other pep talks and positive affirmations to help us keep going which continued to unify us. By the end, we were all yoked together on a rope to help us finish that challenging hike. It was definitely an initiating moment. If I had had a badge to give them I would have, because they deserved it. I had them write down some of their thoughts when we returned home.
There was so much mutual respect. Most of us have grown up together, but this time, we really connected simply as people. Even though we all come from different cultural or physical backgrounds and have contrasting opinions, we got to learn more about each other just by spending two days straight together in nature.
The night hike and 7 mile hike were significant to me for many reasons, one of my favorites being that we saw the things around us with an artist’s point of view. While hiking we’d notice textures on rocks, twisted and warped branches, hoodoo shapes, and other random things like that ans we’d comment on them pretty often. And almost every time, it had to do with art. It was eyeopening.
I vividly remember the moment when we settled into a wide rock cavity off the trail for lunch. We ate our sandwiches that got soggy from the heat and then became absorbed in different forms of art. Eventually, a sweaty, red-faced man passed by us and said, “what a well rested bunch!” I looked at our group and realized that yeah, we were a well rested bunch! Before we sat down, we were just as sweaty and red in the face as that man was. But we became so content and relaxed by immersing ourselves in art and nature. I always remember that experience when I exercise in nature because I felt so peaceful and content and I want to create more experiences like that in my life. -Eileen
Another student wrote:
Our camping trip was incredibly eye-opening to me. It allowed us to take principles and skills we learned in the art room and practice them in a new, pressure-free way. We cultivated a desire for creating, in the most pure way possible. There was no GPA incentive, or the pressure of a grade.
I remember deciding, along with other people in my car to leave our phones in the car during the whole trip in change for a deep emotional connection to ourselves and nature. I lived completely in the moment, and committed myself entirely to experiencing, making, and becoming art. I found the difficulty and the simplicity in creating my interpretations of the beauty around me. Even when we were not creating art, we were creating friendships and emotional bonds to last a lifetime. Between practical jokes, s’more roasting contests, and endless laughter, I created 8 lifelong friendships. The 3-day adventure will always be dodged firmly among my fondest memories, and my gretest learning experiences. -Abby
I am happy to report that both of these students continued to practice the things they learned on that trip. Over the summer I saw a social media post from Eileen’s mom that was thanking me for the impact I had on her daughter because she carried that sketchbook everywhere. Abby showed up on the first day of school with pages and pages of sketches that documented all of her travels over the summer.
My husband and I packed in a truckload of camping gear and three students into our vehicle and headed out on a three hour drive to Bryce Canyon, followed by a second car with four additional students. We left on Thursday morning and would be gone till Saturday. I had no idea how this was going to go. All of my students came from various walks of life, had different value systems, and very different personalities. Some loved the outdoors and some had never been camping before.
When we arrived we set up camp and then headed for the rim with our large bins of art supplies. This is what we had been wanting to do all year and we were finally going to have a “paint out.” Little did we know when we sat down on the dirt at the edge of the canyon we wouldn’t get back up for four hours. They loved every minute of it and were so engrossed with what they were viewing and making. It was silent the entire time, except for the occasional passerby who wanted to inquire and peak over their shoulders to see what they were making. As a teacher, I couldn’t stop grinning because I had taken the leap and brought them to a place where they could find real meaning and wholeness. This environment nurtured all of those philospophies I had studied.
That evening we took a hike down into the hoodoos and I watched them bond together as they held hands to assist each other, told jokes, and shared stories. We ended up climbing out of the amphitheater at night. We stopped along the trail and everyone just laid down and stared at the sky. It is my favorite teaching moment by far as I listened to them gasp everytime one of them spotted a shooting star. They could have laid there forever, undisturbed in the night staring at the Milky Way. In that moment they were making those deep connections to the earth and the sky, to each other, and with me. We really were in it together.
The students learned to work together and care for one another as we prepared meals, sat around campfires, and walked…a lot. We took them on a seven mile hike the following day and they would need each other to survive it. We had studnets who ran out of water early on and they eventually rationed out all of their water so that everyone stayed hydrated, even it meant only a cap full. You talk a lot and with various people depending on how well you were feeling and how tired your legs were. We gave each other pep talks and positive affirmations to help us keep going which continued to unify us. By the end, we were all yoked together on a rope to help us finish that challenging hike. It was definitely an initiating moment. If I had had a badge to give them I would have, because they deserved it. I had them write down some of their thoughts when we returned home.
There was so much mutual respect. Most of us have grown up together, but this time, we really connected simply as people. Even though we all come from different cultural or physical backgrounds and have contrasting opinions, we got to learn more about each other just by spending two days straight together in nature.
The night hike and 7 mile hike were significant to me for many reasons, one of my favorites being that we saw the things around us with an artist’s point of view. While hiking we’d notice textures on rocks, twisted and warped branches, hoodoo shapes, and other random things like that ans we’d comment on them pretty often. And almost every time, it had to do with art. It was eyeopening.
I vividly remember the moment when we settled into a wide rock cavity off the trail for lunch. We ate our sandwiches that got soggy from the heat and then became absorbed in different forms of art. Eventually, a sweaty, red-faced man passed by us and said, “what a well rested bunch!” I looked at our group and realized that yeah, we were a well rested bunch! Before we sat down, we were just as sweaty and red in the face as that man was. But we became so content and relaxed by immersing ourselves in art and nature. I always remember that experience when I exercise in nature because I felt so peaceful and content and I want to create more experiences like that in my life. -Eileen
Another student wrote:
Our camping trip was incredibly eye-opening to me. It allowed us to take principles and skills we learned in the art room and practice them in a new, pressure-free way. We cultivated a desire for creating, in the most pure way possible. There was no GPA incentive, or the pressure of a grade.
I remember deciding, along with other people in my car to leave our phones in the car during the whole trip in change for a deep emotional connection to ourselves and nature. I lived completely in the moment, and committed myself entirely to experiencing, making, and becoming art. I found the difficulty and the simplicity in creating my interpretations of the beauty around me. Even when we were not creating art, we were creating friendships and emotional bonds to last a lifetime. Between practical jokes, s’more roasting contests, and endless laughter, I created 8 lifelong friendships. The 3-day adventure will always be dodged firmly among my fondest memories, and my gretest learning experiences. -Abby
I am happy to report that both of these students continued to practice the things they learned on that trip. Over the summer I saw a social media post from Eileen’s mom that was thanking me for the impact I had on her daughter because she carried that sketchbook everywhere. Abby showed up on the first day of school with pages and pages of sketches that documented all of her travels over the summer.