Middle School

Building Foundations

In Middle School, you’ll develop your own creative voice, channeling your feelings into powerful visuals.

You’ll explore artistic fundamentals—think color theory; understanding of elements of art; how to safely navigate a studio, and more. You’ll build a repertoire of technical skills as you play with a variety of media and forms, from drawing to painting, clay to fabrics to recycled materials, and more.

Inspiration awaits through explorations of diverse artists, artistic styles, and periods the world over. While guest lectures and field trips to local museums will give you ample opportunities to put your new artistic vocabulary and critique skills to good use.

MS Visual Arts Curriculum

Middle School Work

Through 2-D and 3-D design challenges, you might explore pointillism and composition theory through a portrait study of your new fashion-forward kicks. Or experiment with sgraffito glazing technique to enhance the lines and textures in your ceramics. Or draw inspiration from a contemporary artist to collaboratively design emotive figurative sculptures using an unconventional media: packing tape. Or consider the line (is there one?) between Art and Craft as you delve into the world of papermaking to create your own concertina and tunnel books. As you complete works, you’ll add them to your new digital portfolio to share with the world.

Middle School

Art and Design Explorations

In ninth-grade, you’ll take a three-trimester course in Art and Design. As you rotate through each of our 2-D, 3-D, and digital studios, you’ll have the opportunity to explore and experiment with diverse media. You’ll broaden and deepen understandings of the design process as you apply an iterative design thinking approach to collaborate with your teachers and peers to refine your work.

Creative Electives

Discover a medium that inspires your inner artist? In Upper School, you can focus in with diverse creative electives that include drawing, painting, ceramics, fiber arts, mixed media, screen printing, sculpture, and more.

Upper School

Upper School Work

Viva Viclas – painting by Jaya Winemiller as inspired by a field trip to the Contemporary Museum of Art in Raleigh’s low rider motorcycle show.

Clutch purse created with fabric handwoven on a tabletop loom and hand sewn by Chioma Modilim (’22) in Fiber Arts course during her freshman year

Color Tile project – Students found a color that best represented them clipped from a magazine, matched the color in acrylic and remixed it with house paint to create their own ceiling tiles in the art studio.

Macramé hanging tray created by Isabella Barnette (’20) in Fiber Arts course during her sophomore year.

Daydreamer- handbuilt ceramic figurative scultpure by Lauren Hsu, created in Advanced 3D.

Machine sewn garment created from a commercial pattern in Fiber Arts course by Anna Lane (’20) during her junior year.

Advanced Opportunities

For the serious artist, our Advanced Studio 2-D and 3-D class will help you hone and present your artistic voice. You’ll be given the freedom to interpret assignments to reflect your own ideas, concepts, and styles. And emerge with a portfolio of high quality work that can be submitted as an AP studio art portfolio.