Art & Shop

Art is an integral part of an Allen-Stevenson boy's education. It is a hands-on experience of discovery and invention. In art and shop students develop their imaginations and skills of observation, in the areas of woodworking, drawing, painting, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking and more. All of the art teachers at Allen-Stevenson are professional, exhibiting artists, and bring their expertise and passion for art to the classroom. We have painters, sculptors, video artists and photographers on our faculty. As teachers we nurture the individual abilities and ideas of our students, while imparting a love for making art. In addition, we encourage group projects that help build skills in cooperative learning.

 

Each skill learned in Kindergarten is built upon and developed in the upper grades, culminating in the Ninth Grade interdisciplinary Facing History Monument Project (researched and created to commemorate a social concern, focusing on genocide). We also offer a wide variety of electives from ceramics to oil painting and photography for the upper grades. In Fourth Grade students have an extra workshop with a visiting artist, sponsored by the Fischbein family. This past year students created handmade felt banners.

 

We are fortunate to have many museums in our backyard that we visit often, coordinating our curriculum with their exhibits. We integrate some of our projects with classroom social studies curricula. For example, in the Fifth Grade this year, boys study ancient civilizations, including a focus on Greek and Roman Mythology. In art this year, students are creating large-scale masks of gods of their own invention. In Second Grade, as they study New York City, we create group murals about the city.