Middle School Visual Arts Program

The Middle School visual arts program emphasizes the close examination of concepts, ideas, and processes through project-based experiences with a variety of materials and tools. Knowledge, skills, and learning are developed in a format of discussion, decision-making, and practice. Students are guided through sequential steps in planning, designing, and choosing effective compositions, techniques, and materials in order to successfully accomplish project goals.

Our program emphasizes connections between artistic and academic disciplines and historical, cultural, and real-world contexts through observation, conversation, research and art-making. Over their four years in Middle School, students receive a strong foundation in drawing, painting, printmaking, clay modeling, mixed media, and construction.

Through their exploration of visual art, students have the opportunity to build skills and also to express their understanding and experience of the world through their creations. Activities that relate to other subject areas and opportunities to work with artists both within and outside the AFS community also strengthen the ways that students connect the visual arts to the broader world.