By Jenny Shen ’23
As our school’s website says: “the visual art department strives to give our students an outlet for developing and expressing creative ideas in a variety of mediums.” The visual art department at FGS provides students with numerous term-long and full-year courses covering a variety of different mediums. These courses include A.P. Studio Art (year long), Black and White Photography, Ceramics I and II, Drawing, Painting, Film Production, Printmaking, and Digital Photography.
To further introduce the Visual Art Program, I conducted a quick interview with Mr. Richards. Mr. Richards has his master’s degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in art education and this year is his seventeenth year at the Frederick Gunn School. He had been teaching A.P. Studio Art for fifteen years, and it is the class that excites him the most because “students are really deciding what they want to do with their portfolio, so it’s very different than any other art classes.” I took the A.P. Studio Art class my junior year and I believe it’s a course that motivated me to get out of my bed every morning. During the class, I created a portfolio focused on the theme: of maximizing the storytelling ability of portraits. The themes of the portfolios are very personalized and students have the ability to express their creativity freely and thoroughly.
Mr. Richards also introduced that there are a few upcoming shows that will be exhibited in the TPACC art gallery. The most recent one is a student work show, including pieces from current students in the A.P. Studio Art class and the Artistry & Technique co-curricular, covering a wide range of students. Mr. Turner, the photography and film production teacher, might also put some photographs in the show as well. The show will be open to the school around parents’ weekend, but some changes might be made to the gallery during Christmas time.
The Art Department teachers have also been talking about a couple of different possible invited-artist gallery shows in the future. One of these artists is an alumni photographer named Ron Sherman, who has been a working photographer for the past 50 years. His works have been published in national magazines such as Time, Life, Newsweek, Forbes, etc. Sherman creates unique images using a combination of photography and computer technology, and his photographs are currently on display at the Martin Luther King, Jr National Historic Site, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture Museum, and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. So please look forward to these possible exhibits and stop by the TPACC gallery during your free time!
The Highlander 