Natalie doing timed life-drawing exercises

This is a really small cross-section of student work: I kick myself for every photo I didn’t take of a masterpiece that one of them did. One of these days, I’ll track down more documentation of their projects, performances and presentations, and build a proper section honoring their amazing work.

Because Fine Arts/Art History was a mandatory, year-long class at Leadership High School, I had the unusual, enormous privilege of watching students grow as artists and creative thinkers over a sustained period of time. Many students hadn’t had access to art classes since elementary school, and arrived self-conscious about their skills, and suspicious of the modern art they had to learn about. With this in mind, the course began with somewhat traditional skill-building/confidence-building projects, and then evolved into more complex experimental themes and ideas. Some of the work here corresponds to the sample lesson plans in the Lessons and Rubrics section.