The Guest Artist Experience - Visual Arts

Guest artists in the Kinder HSPVA Visual Arts Department share their talents with students in many different ways, from lectures and critiques to elective classes. They can introduce students to mediums outside the core Visual Arts curriculum, and also to different techniques students can apply within their core classes. Students Amira Diaw, Tania Vega and Ire Asojo (all Visual Arts ’21) shared their experiences with guests like Katherine Trimble, Diana Sanchez, Tomas Feijo (Visual Arts ‘10), and Chris Cascio (Visual Arts ‘95).

Student-favorite consultant Katherine Trimble teaches Visual Arts students two elective classes: photography and video. In their sophomore year, students are exposed to these two mediums through prompted projects, and are taught how to use software like Lightroom, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Adobe Premiere. Students also learn about different photographers and videographers and their artistic processes. Trimble encouraged conversations about the medium and the importance of different elements through interactive exercises, videos, and pictures. Junior Ire Asojo said, “Her classes were focused on learning in a fun, supportive way, and her projects reflected this notion. [The classes] were not centered on how “good” the end products turned out. Instead, each project was seen on its own—not as a comparison to someone else’s—and each critique was kind, informative, and in some cases (when we did sillier projects), funny.” Ire and Tania explained that while they were both initially uncomfortable with the medium, they were able to enjoy the classes and become familiar with photography and video.

Another foundational elective in Visual Arts is life drawing, taught by Diana Sanchez. Similar to Trimble’s classes, students were given prompts to complete projects. Students learned how to draw detailed images from observation with the use of charcoal, graphite, color pencil, watercolor, and oil paste. Junior Tania Vega said that both Sanchez and Trimble “helped me gain more confidence in taking risks, which was integral to ultimately building up my artist statement where I talk about my art process.” The artist statement is an artist’s written description of their work. During their sophomore year, students begin drafting ideas through writing and description exercises. At the beginning of their junior year, students formally write a draft and continue revising it until they present it at their senior show.

Guest artist Tomas Feijo taught an art history class about the principles of art and design and their application to every piece of one’s art. In this discussion-based class, students were also able to write reflections of the different artists and work they were exposed to. This year, the juniors were also able to take a painting class from consultant Chris Cascio. In this class, the students were granted more freedom and independence because “we were creating our own body of work,” says Tania. She also says she was able to apply the observational skills she gained from Sanchez’s class freshman year.

With Feijo and Cascio, Tania says she feels prepared to be an artist because they allowed her “to take myself less seriously when it comes to creativity and expressing myself. Of course, it is important to be serious and professional in art, but Mr. Tomas and Mr. Cascio encourage a non-cutthroat environment by creating opportunities for meaningful, casual, and sometimes humorous dialogue about my work, my peers’ work, and other artists and their work. By having these conversations, I’m able to elaborate very comfortably about my own work to other people.”

As a part of the Visual Arts Department curriculum, all elective classes include critiques. Junior Amira Diaw says that by having guest artists critique their work, the students are able to receive “new feedback and [become open] to different ideas given by people that we look up to as aspiring artists.” Outside of critiques, the guest artists “are always available to provide feedback or help with a technical issue,” says Tania.

These guest artists become true mentors to the students as they share their personal experiences as “multifaceted consultants,” as Tania says, and remind the students to have fun while making art.