May began with a guest artist visiting the Fourth Grade. The talented Phil Knoll came in with another fine drawing lesson, which was a real hit with the young artists.
Thank you, Phil!
Last Tues., the Third Grade went to the Eric Carle Museum, where they saw Eric Carle’s work, talked about how he made his art, visited an exhibit of paintings and drawings about the Negro Baseball League, and then each student created a small book. It was the perfect rainy day adventure.
On Friday, the Fourth Graders went to ArtOmi, where they enjoyed a splendid day for touring the grounds of the sculpture park with Sasha Sicurella, the Education Director there. The students also learned about the “green” Visitor’s Center designed by BCD parents Peter Franck and Kathleen Triem. They had a chance to make cardboard sculptures before we enjoyed an alfresco lunch.
That was the final Art trip for this year!
Posted in Uncategorized May 13, 2012
On Wednesday the Second Grade and the Kindergarten took a trip to Mass MoCA. Both groups toured the galleries and Kidspace. Docents were impressed with the students’ questions, excitement and excellent “museum behavior”. We ended the day with a group art project. Making prints with shaving cream was messy fun for everyone.
Posted in Uncategorized May 11, 2012
The first grade meets three times a week for theater class with Ms. Brentano. We are exploring awareness of our senses, team work, vocal expression, physical precision, and performance. We’ve chosen the story of Stone Soup as material for our presentation. The students are sharing ideas on how to adapt the story for the stage. The message in the tale supports the Lower School’s social curriculum focus on compassion, generosity, diversity, and friendship. Below are photos of the kids playing ‘museum.’ Students were in pairs and one of them was the ‘artist’ who sculpted a piece out of their partner. The class then took a ‘tour’ of the museum and the artists spoke about each of their sculptures. The cooperation and creativity was exceptional!
Our presentation of our work with be in Furey on June 8th at 1:25PM. Please join us.
Posted in Uncategorized April 5, 2012
The weeks before our break were quite busy, including ARTS WEEK! There was the annual Art Show, seen by students and many parents on Arts Night. All the Arts teachers were impressed by the attendance for Arts Night. Our artists shone, with the visual art hung in Fitzpatrick Hall, and the many performers on stage. The audience was treated to singing, play readings, recorded electronic music pieces, as well as live musical performers.
In addition, there were several volunteers in our very talented parent community who came into classes and shared their skills and their work. 
In the art studio, Kevin Sprague presented a slide show to the 6th grade that showed his work as a photographer and graphic designer. Tom O’Neil also joined the 6th graders and shared his process and his passion with a brief history of art and his own work. 
In the 8th and 9th grade Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture class, graphic novelist Barbara Slate shared her process with students in creating a quickly conceived and developed graphic novel. Several other artists will be visiting art classes in the future.
In the Graphic Design studio, Cooper Parker’s parents, Karla Roberts and Kingsley Parker, both graphic designers, came in and worked on a project with the students.
The Arts Department greatly appreciates the time and talents shared with our students! All these opportunities enrich the lives of the community.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Arts Week Recap March 16, 2012
He's a snowman!
This week while the Upper School is galavanting around the world, the 4th grade is diving into theater with Ms. Brentano! We meet a couple of times a day and are exploring our five senses, and the Ws: who, what, where, when, and why through a series of games and improvisations. There is much laughter and creativity. Below are some photos of a few of the exercises we’ve done so far. The students are learning about listening and reacting as opposed to indicating and anticipating as actors. This talented group has a great future in theater at BCD. I hope they are inspired by our week together and will pursue future endeavors!
Sebastian and Grace Cliff Diving
Please cure us, Doctor!
Family photo
Competing for the prize
Posted in Uncategorized March 6, 2012
This Thurs. the Third Grade wooden sculptures go on display in the library. Please stop in and see them! These works show a great diversity of subject matter and style. Very little material was cut or trimmed. Most of the work was put together with the available pieces combined with imagination, thinking about balance, form, and about creating a work that is interesting from all sides.
There are many opportunities to see three dimensional works locally, from monuments to the annual sculpture show at Chesterwood and from Sculpture Now, which will be putting work in Lenox and Hinsdale this year. There is also ArtOmi’s gorgeous sculpture park, along with smaller venues tucked around these hills. Letting your children see sculpture in person may be inspirational. Perhaps you can start your own family sculpture park in your yard?
Posted in Uncategorized February 7, 2012
Lower School art students sketch every week. Often they sketch a person sitting across from them at the table. We always dicuss really observing the features of the other person and making sure the sketch has details that portray an individual. The two sketches above are done by a first grader. Both sketches are actually of the same student. This child has really taken our lessons on sketching to heart and is drawing what he sees in the face of his classmate. It’s amazing to see this development in just a few months. Enjoy!
Posted in Uncategorized January 31, 2012
A couple of weeks before our Christmas break, Ian Evans (the son of John Evans, BCD’s school psychologist ) came to an electronic music class to talk about a project that he has been involved with over the past couple of years. Ian is an old friend of mine and is a gifted keyboardist and more recently, producer and composer. He has been going to Haiti on a regular basis to seek out musicians and vocalists to collaborate with and produce recordings with them. His method has been to work with friends in the U.S. to create the instrumental tracks, and then to go to Haiti to find people to record the singing and free styling on top of that. He has a portable recording studio that consists of a MacBook and a microphone plus interface (that all run off of the computer’s battery), and he takes it to the streets to record the vocals. He literally meets people everywhere he goes that are willing to put on a pair of headphones, choose their favorite backing track, and just start singing or rapping right on the spot.
The music that Ian played for us was incredible, a mixture of modern hip hop, funk, and hints of the island styles which are native to the Caribbean, with very inspired vocal parts. Participants range from young kids to experienced and recognized artists from Haiti. Ian pointed out that since there is a low literacy rate in this poor nation, people generally rely on their verbal communication and are very quick with words as well as having the ability to absorb a lot of information from the spoken word. They speak a language that is called creole, a blend of French and African dialects that has evolved into their own language. It was hard to interpret what was being sung in the recordings that Ian played for us, but we really enjoyed the music and Ian related the basic content of the songs.
The idea is that some of the interested students who take the electronic music class can work on compositions with the intention that they may be used for Ian’s project, and hopefully will have vocals from the streets of Haiti added to them. We have taken the past three weeks to form three groups of four students each to collaborate on tracks to send to Ian for this project. So far the raw materials for the three pieces have been recorded and we will be spending the next two classes learning how to arrange, mix, and master the tracks. Then we will email the audio files to Ian down in Haiti and he will take them and add them to his collection of backing music, at which point, a lucky Haitian will hopefully select a BCD track to sing to. A true international collaboration!
Posted in Arts Department January 24, 2012
FREEZE!
On Wednesday during Flex Block, the fifth grade theater co-curricular students presented some of the work they’ve explored in their two-week theater workshop with Meg Agnew.
Improv based, they played games and increased their self-awareness and ability to work as an ensemble. The audience of parents and middle school students thoroughly enjoyed watching their peers have so much fun on Furey’s stage!
AGAIN!
Posted in Uncategorized January 21, 2012
CREATING COSTUMES WITH NEEKA'S MOM
[caption id="attachment_194" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="WARMING UP"]
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The Upper School co-curricular theater is deep into rehearsing an adaptation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The ensemble of 7th, 8th, and 9th graders are exploring life in the middle ages, the meaning of a pilgrimage journey, and the courageous process of working on a collaborative piece. The playwright, Jessica Litwak, will be attending rehearsal in January to work with the students and will also attend the production in February.
Creating the characters, costumes, and design concept has been challenging and the talents and creative impulses of this group are evident.
The 8th grade is moving into medieval history in class which will coincide with the production and hopefully help them make connections with the material now and in the future.
This is a great opportunity for the kids to explore this rich material in an accessible and fun way.
The shows are at the Winthrop Theater on February 23rd, 24th, and 25th at 7PM.
CAST ENJOYING LUNCH PROVIDED BY A PARENT
Posted in Arts Department ,Uncategorized January 12, 2012
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