Art is Valuable at Notre Dame High School

The following was submitted for publication by Notre Dame High School:

Art is alive and well at Notre Dame High School, Belmont (NDB) along with science, math and technology, empowering young women. It is full STEAM ahead as embodied by recent projects by NDB’s Sculpture II students.

STEAM, an educational initiative created by the Rhode Island School of Design, adds and encourages the integration of art and design into the original STEM framework (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). According to the Rhode Island School of Design, “The goal is to foster the true innovation that comes with combining the mind of a scientist or technologist with that of an artist or designer.”

Martha Anne Kuntz, NDB Sculpture Teacher, encouraged her students to take inspiration from the "Everyday" and create their own unique version of Pop Art. Pop Art and artists emerged in Britain and America in the 1950s during a time of turbulence, experimentation, and consumerism. The artists began looking for inspiration in the world around them, representing and making art directly from everyday items, consumer goods, and mass media. Using bold primary colors, often straight from a can or tube of paint, artists adopted commercial methods like silkscreening, or produced multiples of works, downplaying the artist's hand and the idea of originality. Pop artists favored realism, everyday, and even mundane, imagery.

Kuntz shared, “These oversized ‘items’ were created with a great deal of problem solving, inspiration from the original Pop artists, sheer determination, and the study of materials in order to come as close to the original packaging and food as possible.”

Some of the lessons the arts teach are that complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity - learning the ability and willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds; that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer; and, that small differences can have large effects (from 10 Lessons The Arts Teach by By Elliot Eisner, National Art Education Association).

This art lesson follows NDB’s holistic educational approach - teach them what they need to know for life, and have fun doing it. The ingenuity, creativity, and imagination is incredible - thank you NDB Sculpture II students for these impressive pieces of artwork. Keep the STEAM going!