Art Department

Faculty:  Mr. Robert Beemon and Mr. Dave Buetsche

Art classes are electives.  Art is a class that meets every day.  There is an average of 25-30 students in each period.  Juniors and seniors can take Advanced Placement Studio Art in 2-D Design and/or Drawing to earn college credit.

Classes deal mostly in 2-D media and techniques including drawing, painting, design, collage, and printmaking.  Students are required to keep an art box with their own art supplies.  The goal is to have students doing three or more hours of homework each week.

Students can use the computer labs to work on digital design, photography, and to make art using computer tools.

Usually, between 60-70 freshmen sign up to take Art I.  The signature of the art teacher is required for acceptance into subsequent Art classes .

Only students who have a serious interest in art should sign up for Art I.   These are students who think they want to take art for four years and might even want to study art in college.  Students who just want a “fine arts credit” are advised to take the survey course, Arts Awareness.

What kind of student would do well in Art I at Elder?  These are the most important traits he should have, listed in order of importance:

• Effort, enthusiasm, self-motivation, and discipline.  The student likes to work hard and he enjoys doing a good job.
• Intelligence.  The student likes to think, likes to read, solve problems, find answers and make connections.
• Artistic Talent.  This is the one thing that cannot really be taught.  It is a good head start, but a student also needs a little of the other two traits to really use his talent.

What about the future after Art I?  Here is an interesting statistic:  Of those 60-70 Art I students, only 15-25 are still in the program, taking Art as seniors.  This year, there are 25 Art seniors.  Half of them will probably be in some kind of college art program next year.  On average, each year about 5-6 senior art students are awarded merit-based scholarships to art schools or colleges.

To sum up, if an incoming freshman would like to make a sincere effort at being a productive art student, we would love to give him that chance.  Do not worry if he has not had much formal training in grade school.  Elder’s art students produce some excellent work and have fun doing it, because much is expected of them.  The student who signs up for Art I because he thinks it will be easy or because he does not do well in his other classes and needs a break, will be disappointed.  It is not a class for someone with a “do whatever you want” mentality.