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Pennsbury High School East art students reached new artistic heights after creating two-story sculptural structures on the inside walls of their school.
The two sculptures each reach a height of about 12 feet and depict a colorful abstract tornado design and an abstract sculpture of interlocked picture frames and shapes. Both projects are displayed on the wall of the bus dock lobby at Pennsbury High School East.
The abstract tornado design is the idea of senior Amanda Casole and the photo frame design belongs to senior Katelynn Sierko.
The collaborative art pieces were constructed by the school’s two introduction to art through sculpture classes. The semester-long class focuses on three-dimensional arts for students in grades nine through twelve.
This year is the first year that high school art teacher Curtis May created the class as an opportunity for students with an interest in art forms other than drawing and painting. He wrote a proposal for the class two years ago and it was approved by the district to start this fall.
May, who has been with the district for about 11 years, said he is very appreciative of the school board and administration for approving the class for students.
For the course, May came up with inventive and cost effective ways for students to be creative through sculpture. So far, most of the art projects were created by students out of recycled materials, such as corrugated cardboard and paper mache.
The course has two sections of about 23 students, where they learn the basic elements of art, such as line, shape, space, form, color and texture.
“I thought it was a great way to introduce the elements of art. Students learn a greater appreciation for sculpture and the things they can do artistically on their own,” May said.
The class’ two-story sculpture project began by designing a three-dimensional abstract design on top of a cardboard box lid.
The top two projects were selected by the class to be created and mounted on the walls in the high school where the students introduced color into the designs through bright paints.
To create the sculptures to scale students used their graphing skills learned in mathematics to recreate the model.
The process began as the first project of the year and was intended to teach students about movement and balance in art and working with positive and negative space. May thinks the students learned about teamwork through the exercise.
“There was a lot of camaraderie between the classes when they were working together,” he said.
Amanda Casole, 16, is an art major student at Pennsbury and was inspired to create her sculpture to replicate natural disasters, such as tornados and hurricanes in an abstract way.
“All of the students were really talented while putting everything together as a scale replica of what I designed. I’m really proud of my creativity and it is a project I can put into my art portfolio,” Casole said.
Casole, who plans to major in fine arts in college, took the class as a way to further her knowledge of sculpture.
In addition to the two-story sculpture pieces, students also created paper mache hands out of brown craft paper and wheat paste and painted them bronze in a unit focusing on Rodin.
Students also created teeth out of chicken wire, paris graft and spackle paint on a unit studying artist Seward Johnson and will carve famous portraits into pumpkins under the instruction of May who is also a pumpkin carver at the Bucks County Pumpkinfest.
“I hope they get extremely excited about art and will be inspired to take more art classes in the future,” May said of the new course.
The two sculptures each reach a height of about 12 feet and depict a colorful abstract tornado design and an abstract sculpture of interlocked picture frames and shapes. Both projects are displayed on the wall of the bus dock lobby at Pennsbury High School East.
The abstract tornado design is the idea of senior Amanda Casole and the photo frame design belongs to senior Katelynn Sierko.
The collaborative art pieces were constructed by the school’s two introduction to art through sculpture classes. The semester-long class focuses on three-dimensional arts for students in grades nine through twelve.
This year is the first year that high school art teacher Curtis May created the class as an opportunity for students with an interest in art forms other than drawing and painting. He wrote a proposal for the class two years ago and it was approved by the district to start this fall.
May, who has been with the district for about 11 years, said he is very appreciative of the school board and administration for approving the class for students.
For the course, May came up with inventive and cost effective ways for students to be creative through sculpture. So far, most of the art projects were created by students out of recycled materials, such as corrugated cardboard and paper mache.
The course has two sections of about 23 students, where they learn the basic elements of art, such as line, shape, space, form, color and texture.
“I thought it was a great way to introduce the elements of art. Students learn a greater appreciation for sculpture and the things they can do artistically on their own,” May said.
The class’ two-story sculpture project began by designing a three-dimensional abstract design on top of a cardboard box lid.
The top two projects were selected by the class to be created and mounted on the walls in the high school where the students introduced color into the designs through bright paints.
To create the sculptures to scale students used their graphing skills learned in mathematics to recreate the model.
The process began as the first project of the year and was intended to teach students about movement and balance in art and working with positive and negative space. May thinks the students learned about teamwork through the exercise.
“There was a lot of camaraderie between the classes when they were working together,” he said.
Amanda Casole, 16, is an art major student at Pennsbury and was inspired to create her sculpture to replicate natural disasters, such as tornados and hurricanes in an abstract way.
“All of the students were really talented while putting everything together as a scale replica of what I designed. I’m really proud of my creativity and it is a project I can put into my art portfolio,” Casole said.
Casole, who plans to major in fine arts in college, took the class as a way to further her knowledge of sculpture.
In addition to the two-story sculpture pieces, students also created paper mache hands out of brown craft paper and wheat paste and painted them bronze in a unit focusing on Rodin.
Students also created teeth out of chicken wire, paris graft and spackle paint on a unit studying artist Seward Johnson and will carve famous portraits into pumpkins under the instruction of May who is also a pumpkin carver at the Bucks County Pumpkinfest.
“I hope they get extremely excited about art and will be inspired to take more art classes in the future,” May said of the new course.
