Congratulations to Stephanie Wintjes and Borislav Varadinov, who have organized the International Community Art Show, and all the art teachers and teachers, parents and associates who are collaborating artists on the theme of ‘Nature and Culture’. Thank you also to Mrs. Swanson’s students Sabrina Huston and Katherine O’Shea who performed music on the evening of the opening vernissage ‘Let me use a parable’. The parable of the tree. The artist has busied himself with this world of many forms and, let us assume, he has in some measure got his bearings in it; quietly, all by himself. He is so clearly oriented that he orders the flux of phenomena and experiences. I shall liken this orientation, in the things of nature and of life, this complicated order, to the roots of the tree. From the roots the sap rises up into the artist, flows through him and his eyes. He is the trunk of the tree. Seized and moved by the force of the current, he directs his vision into his work. Visible on all sides, the crown of the tree unfolds in space and time. And so with the work. No one will expect a tree to form its crown in exactly the same way as its roots. We all know that what goes on above cannot be an exact mirror image of what goes on below.’ Paul Klee
Coming soon, immediately after the Easter break is IB 2 ART EXAM, EXHIBITION AND AUCTION. The IB 2 students are preparing an exhibition in the gallery and studios featuring a selection of their work as it has progressed over the two years of their course and will be interviewed by the visiting examiner on the 23nd of April. The vernissage/opening will be Friday the 27th April from 6.00pm-8.00pm and the auction starts 7.00pm. All the proceeds will go towards ‘The Rahula Trust’ to help some of the world’s poorest children receive an education. http://www.rahula-trust.org/ Look out for the poster below and around school after the break 11the grade IB 1 students are finishing off their transcription projects which are going up around school with their statements both before and after the Easter break. The students chose a specific work of art as a starting point for a personal interpretation. Based on careful critical and contextual research and analysis in their investigation workbooks they made an original work of their own developed in the studio through visual experimentation and a variety of media and processes.
Apart from taking part in the all school art exhibition in May they will be putting their final personal assignments up in the gallery in June for the IB1 Summer Show which will stay up over the summer for visitors to see. The 10th grade’s digital and darkroom photography assignment based on Pablo Neruda’s ‘Odes to Common Things’ can be seen around school. Students made sequences of photographs of ordinary objects viewed in unusual ways. They manipulated light and shadow, colour, viewpoint and framing to create visual ‘poems’. Their anatomical studies can be viewed alongside their developing ‘Hidden Structures’ projects, in which they explore original ideas in variety of different media and processes on 22nd May till June in the gallery at the All School Art Exhibition. The 9th grade’s intaglio printmaking project using the new high school etching press can be seen framed around school and in the middle school foyer. Students developed and extended their observational drawings and sketches through the process of engraving and printing series of impressions using black oil based ink and overlapping oil and water-based coloured ink in layers. They are currently working on a ceramics unit called ‘Empty Vessels’ in which they are researching contemporary ceramics, drawing natural forms and developing designs on paper and in clay of ceramics vessels using a pinch pot and other modeling techniques and different glazes.
Alan Mitchell – HS Art teacher
St. John's International School Blog 