Students are introduced to fundamental art skills, materials, and conceptual models that encourage them to express themselves artistically. The art program supports the Bush School mission: To spark in students of diverse background and talents, a passion for learning, accomplishment, and contribution to their community. Through interdisciplinary and inquiry-based models, students are empowered to explore the freedom of self-expression, to learn skills in observation, creative problem solving, critical thinking, visual communication, and to integrate these skills to sparks the student’s imagination.

Through a method called Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), students learn to critically examine, critique, and discuss works of art from the classic to the modern, and to experiment with their developing technical skills as they begin to create their own personal masterpieces.

 

Students learn a variety of visual art styles, and learn something of the lives of artists across many cultures in time, place, and genre. They explore the elements and principles of art and how these can serve the emerging artist in creating personally meaningful art works. Students experiment, visualize possibilities, take risks, and think divergently to discover and express their own individual artistic vision. They learn to make sometimes tough decisions, solve problems relating to content and materials, make connections between the arts and related disciplines, and to other aspects of culture. They learn to share, reflect upon, and evaluate the process and perspective of their own work and the work of their classmates, building all the while a nurturing community of art culture within the classroom.