Welcoming Our High School Students

Back for the New Year!

Our writing and visual art students dove right back into the work of creating! James Pullen braved the frigid temperatures and hand-cut ice discs out of Lake Hebron to demonstrate what you can create using one material and shape. Dawn Potter started the day off by engaging her students in fast-paced writing exercises using an excerpt from Daniel Mason’s novel North Woods as inspiration.

 

 

Our visual artists, led by James, were introduced to 3D/sculptural work and started building simple maquettes using thin strips of wood as a way to “sketch” in three dimensions. Breaking away from working 2D, they were challenged to bring their creations off the paper. They also visited the studio of one of our residents, Capucine Bourcart, who was working on an interactive art installation in an adjacent studio. Capucine, a New York-based artist, was here for a two-week residency. 

 

 

The writing students kicked off the new year by revisiting the dozens of first drafts they’d written over the course of the fall. Now they’re beginning to think about which pieces have revision potential. They’ve started that process by focusing on their strengths and using that knowledge to expand and improve their drafts. They were fortunate to have the poet Gretchen Berg in the room with them all day, revising alongside them and taking part in one-on-one conversations about their work in progress.

 

 

James put together an installation of ice sculptures on the lake just outside the classroom as a way to introduce both site-specific sculptural work, the iterative process, and ephemeral sculpture. It also demonstrated the use of low-cost or free materials in developing three-dimensional work. 

 

 

Read more about our high school program here.