A Qualitative Research Study of Arts Education and its’ Impact on Post-Secondary Success. Written by Jenny Sturchio.

June 9, 2016June 10, 2016Leave a comment

This past school year I had the opportunity to work with Jenny Sturchio. She is a grad student at Wisconsin Lutheran College in Milwaukee. Her ideas for her Capstone Final was to research how secondary art education impacts post-secondary success. The Sheboygan North High Art Department was one of her subjects for this research. I found it interesting to read her perspective on secondary art education and her correlations to post-secondary education. It is always neat to read what others think about the arts programming, activities, and relationships that exist within a public high school art program.

Feel free to download this PDF. Courtesy of Jenny Sturchio.

Here are some excerpts from her research.

“I find we are presented with material in a very linear way and are expected to understand it in that way as well. By participating in the arts, it has given me the chance to explore ideas and come to the conclusions in a more fluid manner. Having space to work through things abstractly has been beneficial for someone with a right brain way of thinking” (Answer from survey participant, 2016.)

“By being involved in the arts, I was able to find my passion. Being exposed to and given the chance to dabble in artistic curriculum, it opened up doors that would not have been possible otherwise. In a society where math and science are deemed the only suitably successful careers, including arts is a more holistic approach at education. Art has given me more ways to problem solve, and overall another perspective to walk through the world with. I think it is important to keep the arts in secondary education because that is how we keep it in post-secondary, which is important in creating innovators of the world” (Answer from survey participant, 2016.)

“When dealing with a struggling student they refer to creative teaching techniques to create a platform for the student to find success”.

“Not only do they [teachers] consult with the art department for their own classroom integration, but it is observed that arts-active students are more deeply engaged in classroom activities than those who are not”.

“My recommendation would be for high schools to provide professional development for their teachers that covers arts-integrated education”. – Jenny Sturchio

About

J.Sturchio. A Qualitative Research Study of Arts Education and its’ Impact on Post-Secondary Success: This narrative research project was completed in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Master of Arts in Education degree for the College of Adult and Graduate Studies at Wisconsin Lutheran College, Milwaukee, WI. 50pps.

Feel free to download this PDF. Courtesy of Jenny Sturchio.

Reception photos for NHS AiR, Marty Carney

June 3, 2016June 3, 2016Leave a comment

Marty is our fourth artist in residence at Sheboygan North High School. A reception is a great way to celebrate the success of the artist’s accomplishment during our Spring semester. Although his time was dedicated to connecting with NHS students and staff he also created several paintings. Receptions are always unpredictable. It is probably one of the most nerve racking parts of being an artist because you never know who is going to show up.

In this case, Marty had a fab turnout. It was great to see our administration present, aspiring poets, fellow colleagues, former artists in residence, and friends. For the third time, Ms. Cavanaugh’s poetry students wrote poems based on a painting from the artist they liked and read them to the people present. The poetry readings are starting to become a tradition that has found a home at NHS. Marty shared how his paintings were influenced by ecology. Mr. Soik, Honors Humanities teacher, shared how having Marty weekly made a difference in how his students interacted with the artist resulting in a beautiful assemblage.

This program has presented many wonderful opportunities to strengthen our bond as a North High community as well as to welcome unexpected events and embracing them whilst letting things flow where they may.

AP Studio Art Portfolios 2016

May 18, 2016May 18, 2016Leave a comment

This school year, 2015-2016, two NHS art students worked on their AP Studio Art portfolios. Both students communicated their intent through varied media such as collage, markers, paint, and artistic vision. These works are on display in the Lower Level from May 18 – June 1, 2016.

The students arrive in AP Studio Art with a solid foundation in the arts and with breadth pieces of art completed from which to choose. Since AP students have had substantial experience in direct formal art making instruction, the AP class instruction is structured more like a college-level, independent study course where the student and instructor confer to identify an area of concentration for further development based on the student’s strengths, skills, and interests, for example, portraiture, landscapes, abstractions, illustration, and so forth.

Ashley

I am a senior at North High School. I am currently in AP Studio Art and my studio works consists of photographs I captured in the past few years that have a special meaning to me. My artwork tends to focus on nature, and with each body of work, I strive to communicate a variety of emotions to put together a unique portfolio. I used a method called Zentangle to focus specifically on the movement in each piece. I emphasized this element through the use of vibrant lines and the use of value and contrast. Through the different shades and textures, I wanted to tell a different story of my life through the emotions each piece portrayed. Each artwork is a building block that represents a part of my life and what makes me unique as a person.

Chicago

Grandma’s House

Lake Bluff

Vacation Destination

Colorado

Blue Harbor

Lake Michigan

Ice Cream

Mikayla

The inspiration for most of the pieces comes from fairytales. My intention was to take a happy fairytale and distort it in a way that gives it a different or darker meaning. The overall feeling of each piece leaves the viewer to feel uneasy and a sense of mystery and also a desire to figure out what each piece means. These pieces all hold a story behind them, creating an even deeper meaning. I experimented with acrylics and collage and even a combination of the two. I feel as though collage creates a deeper contrast and help the viewer form a more solid idea of the work. I also included one piece that does not fit the fairytale theme, “Even The Mountains Have a Song,” for fun and to display that in the midst of creating one theme, random pieces art can create themselves without any intention of them being there.

Even the Tea Cups Started Talking

He’s a Tramp, But I Love Him

Sleep, Princess, Sleep

Never Grow Up

Dumbo

Lies Kill Your Conscience

What’s the Point?

I Can Show You the World

Even the Mountains Have a Song

The Flowers Were Hers

Excited About Something Exhibition at Silver Lake College

April 20, 2016April 20, 2016Leave a comment

Title: Excited About Something

Location: Silver Lake College, Lake’s Edge Gallery, located on campus at the Franciscan Center for Music Education and Performance, 2406 S. Alverno Road. There is a reception for the students on May 9, 5-6pm.

Exhibition Dates: March 28 – May 9, 2016

Description: Art students from Sheboygan North High School created sixteen works of art ranging form paintings to collages and drawings to ceramics for their exhibition, “Excited About Something”. This exhibition explores the idea of self-expression without structural boundaries. These student artists selected their own substrate, thematic unit, and intent for their artwork.

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Teacher Statements

Mr. Frank Juarez, “Stroke”, acrylic on canvas, 16”x10”, 2016

My paintings are driven by a collection of certain things I feel can influence my work. In my studio I reduce those visuals into paintings with a minimalistic approach. Through my practice, I am able to bring what is important to the surface so that the viewer can interpret his/her own meaning.

Teacher: Mrs. Antoinette Mattern, “The Perfect Breakfast”, Oil on Canvas, 16” x 28”

I really enjoy drawing and painting portraits. People are so interesting! I was inspired to make an Impressionist-style painting of my teen-aged son and daughter as they were having breakfast one morning. They each had “perfect hair,” which is very important if you are in middle school. The peaceful way that they enjoyed their pancakes, along with the beautiful colors in our kitchen that morning, seemed to call me as a mom and as a painter. I really wanted to capture the positive feeling of the moment. I used gestural lines to block in the shapes, and I left some of the distorted perspective to increase that feeling of a fleeting moment.

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Student Statements

Esther Segura, Rebirth, oil on canvas, 2016

The trees are on fire. The ground is black and the fire lights up the sky. The sky has different shades of red and brown. In this painting the trees are a dark brown with some green and black. This painting represents rebirth and second chances. In the painting there are trees on fire. One of the trees is burning to the ground. The sky is lit up with color red. After the trees burn new trees and other plants can grow. This is a cycle that allows plants to regrow and start over. When a forest fire starts it destroys the trees but over time more plants and trees will grow again. This painting means that after something bad happened that a good thing can come out of it too.

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Katie Mendini, “Impure”, acrylic on canvas, 8”x8”, 2016

The internal battle between the good intentions and compulsive, sometimes dark, nature of each individual is depicted. Although the white seems to overpower the bold colors of black and red, they manage to be seen on the other half, and through the gaps of the purity.

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Brittany Wolf, “Small Different Worlds”, collage on canvas, 10”x10”, 2016

It tells you that everyone is different and we should respect everyone no matter where they came from.

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Mikayla Mork, “Sweet Nectar”, collage on paper, 12”x12”, 2016

The inspiration for this piece came from my previous experiences with collage and nature. I wanted to change the action of the subject in the work to form a simile between bad habits and how they feel to an individual.

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Abrille Johnson, “Out of touch”, oil on canvas, 20”x20”, 2016

This painting is about a girl who feels lost because of family health problems that seem to get worse, she looking back on earth because she feels out of touch from society and she doesn’t fit in. She has no one who understands what she is going through so she feels alone.

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Monica McClure, “Galaxy”, acrylic on canvas, 20”x20”, 2016

My painting is about a full moon in a galaxy sky with a shadow tree and blue greenish grass.

This painting is about being free and just go with it. To see what happens I mixed the colors while the paint and wet. By making the darkness and lightness in the sky it makes the painting stands out with the purples, pinks, and blues. My painting makes me feel calm. It looks like a real place that I want to go to lay down in the grass, look up into the sky above and rest my eyes to relax.

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Melicia Sigala, “Aberration”, ceramic, 2016

Mistakes are an art of their own.

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Ailen Flores, “The Modern City”, Acrylic on Canvas, 8” x 10”, 2016

I was just visiting New York City in December. I wanted to make a painting to show the tall buildings. I used bright colors because I wanted to make it look modern.

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Sabrina Bennett, “In the Mind of Others”, Acrylic on Canvas, 8” x 10”, 2016

The purpose behind this canvas is that everyone, everywhere is different. It is saying how a man could have multiple personality disorder while a woman could be anti-social, etc. What and who inspired me to make this artwork was that I was working on a picture for a poetry booklet, but I had it the wrong way, so I decided to try and make a painting of it. Then my friend, Mason Tipton, told me I could make it about mental disorders. He even made me a list of mental disorders as a reference. My friend Talya Thurs said I could use the color blue to represent depression.

This painting was a way for me to paint something that was fun, creative, and would look fun in a gallery. What it means to me is that not everyone understands the mental disorders that are out there. No matter the color of your skin, anybody can have a mental disorder of some kind.

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Jennette Zachow, “The Guardians”, Acrylic on Canvas, 8” x 10”, 2016

The title of my piece is, “The Guardians” I call it this, because the two figures drawn are meant to be seen as illusions, or guardians of nature. The purpose behind my piece is to draw attention to the destruction and pollution of the world. The two figures, or Guardians represent nature, one can be seen with a sad expression on it’s face. The sad expression on one, and the lack of a face on the other are representations of the sadness and despair they feel to have to watch the destruction of the world. I was inspired to create this, by a conversation I had about the Sheboygan River. My step-dad had made a comment about how grossly brown it was, and my mom said that it was clearer usually but because of a storm dirt was drug up to the top of the river. I couldn’t help but think that it was always this gross color, and it wouldn’t be if it weren’t for pollution of the river. I started out with a set of colors that looked nice together, and then went to different color schemes for each Guardian.

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Tyler Galicia, “Madvillainy”, Acrylic on Canvas, 10” x 10”, 2016

What is it’s purpose: To me it has less than the average painting as while it is visually pleasing it lacks originality, and while this wasn’t what i was planning at first i guess it ended up being a nice mistake.

For me really i can say i was more or less thinking of myself while painting this as i think highly of this album in general and with that being said i really took a liking to the cover, with it being a black and white photo but the person in the photo also wearing a mask led to an interesting amount of lights and darks. Overall it was also an easier thing to approach as skin tones aren’t my thing. I need really understood the orange square in the upper right corner but from what i can assume it’s there to keep it from looking so gloomy.

Method: I went with darks and grays with choosing this as i stated earlier skin tones aren’t my thing. I gotta say it went from looking terrible at first to becoming something beautifully complex and i’m happy for it. I guess if i were ever to go about this again i’d plan something in the chance of it and go about something original as opposed to this.

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Nikki Chanthima, “Untitled”, Acrylic on Canvas, 10”x8”, 2016

I make art to express what comes to my mind. Art makes me feel like I’ve released the creative side of me. My friend Natalie, inspired me to create more art. I quit drawing for a year, but she helped me get back to it. I used a stretched canvas and acrylic paint to achieve my artwork. This painting makes me think the girl is mortal and makes everything calm again.

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Lourdes Segura, “Hennette”, Acrylic on Canvas, 10” x 8” 2016

The meaning behind the painting is that every person in the world has a beautiful face. There are many different and unique features on a face that differ on people. The girl’s face within the painting is representing the way I see some beauty of different people within the girl I designed. Her hair contains multiple colors, including a medium brown, red, and yellow. The dots upon her face are like a tattoo. I love to see the beauty in everything in life, no matter what it is. Within the paint there is a little heart next to “PTV” and music note on the side, which represents my favorite band, because the music they made helped me through some stuff. In the beginning there was no plan on what I was going to paint, but in the end the paint turned out to be beautiful to me.

Midwest artist, Jessica Anderson, visits Sheboygan North High art students

March 17, 2016March 17, 2016Leave a comment

On March 14, MAS artist, Jessica Anderson, spent the day at Sheboygan North High School connecting with students through her project, Meditation Walking, as the basis for her meditation drawings that she facilitated with Drawing/Painting II, AP Studio Art, and Senior Art 2 students. Jessica is one of our Year 2 MAS artists.

Jessica’s artist statement states:

Part research, part design, part invention – my work navigates the boundary between mind and body through a re-contextualized lens of science, medicine, and biologic phenomena. Reminiscent of laboratory investigations, my invented scenarios answer questions with questions and provoke participatory explorations of the individual self.

Taking the position as neither a skeptic nor a promoter, my research examines the role of holistic healing practices in contemporary culture. I am interested in individual relationships within these mechanisms of health and provide viewers with opportunities to test their own boundaries of belief. Reframing practices such as a detoxifying footbath, a chi activation machine, and phenomenological exercises, my re-contextualization of existing treatments heightens the tension of purpose, and provides viewers with neutral environments of investigation.

Merging factual information with reinvented application allows me to expand the dialogue of cognitive occurrences. For instance, EMDR therapy asks patients to lean their head to the left to access thoughts and to lean their head to the right to access feelings and emotions. Redirecting this information, I then ask: Is there a discernible difference between these two cerebral directions when drawing a line?

It is a question that can only be answered through experience, observation, and communally applied analytics.

In my work, invitations for experience occur through demonstrative videos, interactive objects/devices, evocative statements of research, and performative exercises. Together, each of these installation elements create a multi-dimensional environment of investigative viewing, biologic questioning, and experiential answering. By repositioning scientifically grounded phenomena into the context of a gallery, information begins to transcend ratiocination and calls upon a physical conversation between mind, body, and personal experience.

Katie, drawing/painting II student, writes, “the meditation drawing experience was very different from what I was expecting going into it. My mind works in a very mechanical fashion so I thought that I would not be able to relax and have my hand wander for a period of time. I found myself having completely letting go. Tracking time was impossible. When just sitting and doing nothing, 10 minutes felt like an eternity. Time was called when I thought we were only half way through. After completing the session, I felt more relaxed, more confident in my decisions, and more sensitive to my surroundings. I would gladly doing this again and recommend it to anyone.

Abrille, drawing/painting II student, writes, “I felt that with this meditation drawing it was weird. At First, it was different because I never done it before. I learned that basically letting your mind take over your hand. You do not exactly create something recognizable. I thought this idea was cool because I never thought you could meditate through art. I was pretty excited with trying something new. In the end Id did get comfortable with doing this. By the time we were finished I was really relaxed, but when I opened my eyes to see what I drew it was unexpected.

Brittany, drawing/painting II student, writes, “Jessica did an amazing job! It was a great experience. I would do it all of the time. I felt refreshed. My mind was at peace.

Mikayla, AP Studio Art student, writes, my experience during the meditation drawing was calming. I wasn’t thinking about what I was drawing, but more what I was feeling. This process taught me that to create art, I do not need to always necessarily think it through, but express how I’m feeling. I also learned that meditation drawing is the releasing of one’s mind. The thoughts and expressions in our minds flow directly into our hand and create an image on paper. When introduced to this process I was very interested. It seemed very stress free and enjoyable. After it was all done, the meditation drawing session made me feel very relaxed. I was also quite surprised by how my drawing looked. It pretty much was a bunch of scribbles, but nonetheless very enjoyable.

Running Time: 14:17 with a 6:21 introduction by Jessica.

Gallery

MAS artist, Jessica Anderson

NHS art students exhibiting at Silver Lake College in March 2016

February 24, 2016February 24, 2016Leave a comment

The North High art department is happy to announce that Mr. Juarez and Mrs. Mattern’s art students will be exhibiting at Silver Lake College in Manitowoc. The exhibition will run from March 28 – May 9, 2016. There will be reception for the students – TBD.

Silver Lake College, 2406 South Alverno Road, Manitowoc, WI 54220, www.sl.edu

Endo/Exotopic Drawings and Sculptures by Art Foundations 4 students

February 17, 2016February 23, 2016Leave a comment

Last semester Art Foundations 3 students explored the idea of creating an endotopic or extopic sculpture out of balsa wood. This semester they revisited their sculptures and now were expected to draw what they created using a unique perspective.

damian

madalyn

kenyana

emily

jada

molly

emma

hannah

morgan

kallista

alison

crosby

lucky

lisa

tamiya

abrille

John Michael Kohler Arts Center Youth Art Month 2016

February 17, 2016February 17, 2016Leave a comment

Congratulations to senior, Jamie X, for being selected as one of four students whose work is featured on this year’s JMKAC YAM Postcard. You can see this piece along with 300+ others on Sunday, February 21. There is a student reception from 11am-3pm at 608 New York Avenue in Sheboygan.

Come celebrate the success of these fab art students from across the county.

postcard courtesy of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center

Video: Artist Frank Juarez. Filmed and directed by Zach Schramm.

February 13, 2016February 13, 2016Leave a comment

This week Zach, senior, at Sheboygan North High created this awesome video for one of his class projects.

About the video:

High school art teacher and artist Frank Juarez talks about how his involvement outside the classroom has made him a better teacher inside the classroom.

Running time: 2:33

Check out other videos he filmed and directed. Click here.