Arts Night Highlights by MMFS Art Teachers

The annual MMFS Arts Night was a celebration of students’ creativity, hard work, and mastery in a wide range of visual art media. Turnout was great. Students from all three divisions enthusiastically guided their families and friends through the exhibits to share their work, while parents beamed with pride. Children excitedly participated in the scavenger hunt, racing around to check off each detail on their sheets as they found it’s artwork in the exhibit.

“Arts Night highlighted the high quality of the students’ artwork, and it was meaningful to see them feeling accomplished and rewarded for their months of hard work,” remarked Jeannine Armbruster, Upper Division Art Teacher.

The Quaker Dinner Party, honoring Quaker women, by the oldest elementary students dominated the middle of the room. The ceramic plates and cloth placemats modeled on Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party received great feedback from everyone. Elementary school students exhibited several other ceramics projects including snails, flowerpots, coil vases, water drums, and bas relief brownstones. Their prints, paper weavings, sculptures, and self portraits based on Kehinde Wiley’s work were also on display.

Middle school students exhibited dynamic and sophisticated work, including sixth graders’ observational paintings of flowers and block prints of sea creatures, and eighth graders’ giant paper maché food sculpture inspired by the work of Claes Oldenburg. A big hit with the younger attendees, these sculptures portrayed edamame, a shrimp, cheese wheels, tacos, and a waffle. Eighth graders also displayed portrait paintings.

Seventh graders exhibited their Rustic Racers, wooden cars built with found wood. In creating their cars, students had been challenged to focus on one or more of the following categories: best display of natural wood, most aerodynamic, best driver and most unique. Seventh grade woodworking students also delighted attendees with their fabulous wooden marionettes with articulated limbs, furry coats, wood-burned designs, and custom-made clothing.

The upper school exhibited masterful work in a wide range of media. These included comics, still life drawings and paintings on paper, paintings on canvas from personal photographs, conceptual sculpture, ceramic work, silkscreen prints, portrait-themed block prints and monotypes, and mixed media works and paintings from a unit on surrealism. There was also work from an open ended media project in response to the question “what is evil?”

Digital media classes displayed eye-catching logo and branding designs, advertisements, and theater posters. Two videos by upper school students were enjoyed by all. The videos can also be found here: http://lightpost.marymcdowell.net/?p=3431

Charles Koegel, Upper Division Art Teacher, was enthusiastic about the evening: “Arts Night was a success! It was the first year that our school has a twelfth grade and it was great to have work from twelve grades represented.

Art Teachers
Jocelyn Russell and Bill Borman in the elementary school
Clare Hilger and Melody Olsen in the middle school
Jeannine Armbruster and Charles Koegel in the upper school