Artist and School Partnerships 2005-2006
Artists and Activism
11th grade Pittsburgh’s High School for the Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) students participated in a 9 week Artist and Activism unit of study, inspired by the Warhol’s General Idea Exhibition. Students began the unit by creating multiple block relief prints inspired by Josh MacPhee’s Celebrate People’s History Project. Students were asked to choose a person or event in history they feel is missing, misrepresented or glossed over in their current history curricula. For their second project, students researched other activist artists that employ a diverse range of artmaking practice, from Barbara Krueger and Judith Baca to local and national street artists and interventionist collaboratives such as General Idea and Department of Space and Land Reclamation. Their final project was to create an Image Virus and implement a plan to “infect” their community with this virus. Many local and national artists conducted workshops and lectures at CAPA: Josh MacPhee, Etta Cetera, Shaun Slifer, Jude Vachon, Mary Tremonte, and Tommy Budjanic.
Warhol: Color and Shape Studies
10th grade Pittsburgh’s High School for the Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) students participated in a beginning silkscreen unit on color and shape using Warhol’s print series: Sunset, Space Fruit, Camouflage, Skulls, Flowers, and Grapes. Students used photographs they took from outside as source material for their prints then manipulated the images in Photoshop to create their film positives. Students combined these photographic images with stenciled areas of color in their final prints.
Schenley High School
Warhol: Color Theory
Schenley High School students participated in a beginning silkscreen unit on color theory using Warhol’s print series: Sunset, Space Fruit, Camouflage, Skulls, Flowers, and Grapes. Students used photographs they took from inside the school building as source material for their prints then manipulated the images in Photoshop to create their film positives. Students combined these photographic images with stenciled areas of color in their final prints.
Artists and Activism
Theory of Knowledge students at Schenley High School explored Aesthetics and the role of art in society, specifically whether art should address contemporary moral or social issues or if art should purely for contemplation and personal enjoyment. Students looked at artists whose work has social political agendas, such as General Idea, Barbara Krueger, Willie Doherty , Adrian Piper, James Luna, and Judith Baca. This unit was developed in conjunction with the Warhol’s General Idea Exhibition. For their final project students installed in the school an exhibition of political posters they created related to Racism, AIDS in Africa and the current conflict in Darfur.
ARTIST AND SCHOOL PARTNERSHIPS 2004-2005
Schenley High School: How Far Have We Come?
Questioning Institutional Collecting
Approximately forty Schenley High School students enrolled in an International Baccalaureate “Theory of Knowledge” course created an exhibition at Schenley High School consisting of objects and images gathered from Schenley’s unofficial archives. Prior to mounting the exhibition, students participated in specialized programs both at The Andy Warhol Museum and at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History that critiqued institutional collecting and museum display. Modeled after Andy Warhol’s own Raid the Icebox exhibition at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum (1969), the resulting exhibition entitled Schenley High School: How Far Have We Come? questioned what institutions choose to collect and why. The exhibition represented points of comparison throughout Schenley’s almost one hundred year history, such as: science and technology, fashion, hairstyles, and both interior and exterior snapshots of the school. Perhaps the largest feature of the project compared dozens of yearbook photographs of people with the last names Smith and Jackson throughout the history of the school, from its inception in 1916 through 2004. Overall the project highlighted themes of continuity throughout a century of dynamic change.
Collecting Schenley
On being an anthropologist
The same forty Schenley High School International Baccalaureate students who created Schenley High School: How Far Have We Come?, participated in the project Collecting Schenley, in which students collected aspects of their everyday experience at Schenley High School. Inspired by Warhol’s own practice of collecting aspects of everyday life and pop culture, students collected everything from dozens of potato chip bag varieties to photographs of the school’s diverse international student body. Students then used their collections as source material for four large-scale collaborative silk screen projects produced in partnership with Artists Image Resource: necklaces, cell phones, graffiti / tattoos, and Converse sneakers. By capturing the repetition of certain trends in consumption and appearance at the school, students believed they were representing their peers’ expressions of individuality, highlighting the school’s diversity, and encapsulating Schenley High School “in the moment.”
ARTIST AND SCHOOL PARTNERSHIPS 2003-2004
CAPA High School
The Still Life As Subject:
From Dutch Vanitas Paintings to Warhol’s Space Fruit
Beginning printmaking students studied still life paintings, prints, and sculptures from the 1600s to the present. Students compared and contrasted the diverse subject matter within this genre and created still life silkscreen prints based upon this comparison. The silkscreen prints combined photographic techniques with hand-cut stencils.
CAPA High School
A Contemporary Look at Classical Themes from Art History
Eleventh grade art history students created silkscreen prints based on a contemporary approach to the major historical themes presented in this introductory art history survey class. Themes chosen by students included: myth and ritual in contemporary American culture, society’s relationships to public monuments and memorials, and contemporary forms of ideal beauty. Students studied Warhol’s use of “machine-like” art making techniques and its relationship to his choice of subject matter.
Flowers Observed, Flowers Transformed Exhibition
Drawing and relief printing classes collaborated on a series of artworks inspired by the Warhol’s exhibition Flowers Observed, Flowers Transformed. Students studied the 16th century Japanese multiple block prints in the exhibition and compared this ancient technique to contemporary media. Students created a series of color studies in the exhibition and used these works to create three-color multiple block prints.
SCHENLEY HIGH SCHOOL
The Psychology of Memory
Based on themes presented in the temporary exhibition November 22, 1963: Image, Memory, and Myth , Schenley High School students looked critically at the reliability of media, eyewitness testimony, the “flashbulb memory” phenomenon, and the power of images to cue emotional responses. Students collaboratively created silk-screened prints based on world events for which they had a flashbulb memory, from the death of rapper Tupac Shakur to the Elian Gonzales incident. A selection of the pieces was exhibited in Youth Invasion 2004 .
Popular Culture: 1950s and Today
In collaboration with Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, Schenley High School's visual art and ceramics students took inspiration from the exhibition Americanisms: Shaping Art and Culture in the 1950s. Students compared and contrasted teen culture from the 1950s to that of today to create a permanent wall mural at Schenley High School.
CAPA's advanced painting students studied abstract artwork from the exhibition Americanisms: Shaping Art and Culture in the 1950s with some of Warhol's abstractions from the 1970s and 1980s. Students formed connections between these works to create their own interpretive paintings as well as photographic silkscreen prints, some of which were displayed at the Warhol as part of the teen program, Youth Invasion.
ARTIST AND SCHOOL PARTNERSHIPS 2001-2002
Warhol's Artistic Practice
Visual art and psychology students from Schenley High School collaborated on a series of projects using a variety of media (silkscreen, video, painting, drawing, and audio). Inspired by Andy Warhol's diverse artistic practice, students examined their contemporary lives through Warhol's films, books, paintings, and more to create artwork.
CAPA HIGH SCHOOL
The Warhol Look, Style, and Fashion
CAPA teacher Karen Page’s textile art students designed and created fashions inspired by Warhol using fabric that they silkscreen printed at Artist Image Resource. To showcase their designs, the students then produced a fashion show at the Warhol for the first annual Youth Invasion.
SCHENLEY HIGH SCHOOL
Revolutionary Change
Schenley High School world cultures and visual art students looked at artwork in the exhibition The Arts of Jean Cocteau that reflected Europe at the turn of the 20th century alongside Warhol's work examining American culture in the latter half of the 20th century. Students made silkscreen prints focusing on revolutionary change in nineteenth century Europe and its effects on modern culture and society.
ARTIST AND SCHOOL PARTNERSHIPS 1999-2000
Interpretative Dance
CAPA dance students choreographed and performed an interpretive dance piece at the Warhol Museum in conjunction with the Warhol and Dance Exhibition.
Art Books
Visual art and writing students from Schenley High School and CAPA collaborated to create large-scale art books that combined image and text to express their ideas about identity. These works were in response to the In Your Face Exhibition at the Museum.
ARTIST AND SCHOOL PARTNERSHIPS 1998-1999
Self Portraits
Schenley High School students examined a variety of Andy Warhol's commissioned portraits to create their own large-scale self-portraits using Warhol's photographic silkscreen process.
Andy Warhol, photo Greg Gorman, 1983
CAPA HIGH SCHOOL