Visual Arts

Our Mission

  • To provide Poly students with an educational program of the highest quality, which prepares them for a lifetime of artistic appreciation and activity.
  • Seek a balance between offering a great variety of visual arts disciplines and the opportunity to achieve at an advanced level in a chosen discipline.
  • Support all Poly students to develop their creative thinking skills and ability to express themselves in an original, purposeful fashion.

Holistic Teaching Model

The Visual Arts Department has developed its own teaching method exclusively used at Poly. The world of art is divided into four areas:
  1. History
  2. Theory
  3. Technique/Process
  4. The Big Picture (how art relates to life and other disciplines).

Poly students develop observational, research, and descriptive skills through carefully constructed projects, with shifting emphasis on each of these four areas. holistic teaching model

Lower School

  • Student Centered
  • Holistic Teaching
  • Interdisciplinary
  • Visual Literacy
  • Manual Dexterity
  • Reflection (Seesaw)
  • Annual Spring student exhibition
  • Foundation studies
  • Kindergarten-5th grade: Drawing, Painting, Ceramics, Printmaking, Jewelry Design, Weaving, Digital Art

Middle School

  • Self-Discovery
  • Holistic Teaching
  • Elements and Principles of Art
  • Styles of Art
  • Foundation studies
  • 6th grade: 2-D/3-D (Art History, Wood Design, Drawing and Painting)
  • 7th grade: 2-D/3-D (Enameling, Ceramics, Drawing and Painting)
  • 8th grade: Electives (Ceramics, Digital Art, Drawing and Painting, Wood Design)

 

Upper School

  • Group Critiques
  • Formal Art Analysis
  • Holistic Teaching
  • Observational Drawing (figure, landscape, still life)
  • Abstract Thinking Skills
  • Function of Art
  • Research
  • Independence
  • Year-long History and Application Courses
  • Visual Art, History and Application with main focus on Art History, and Studio Art Fundamentals
  • Annual AP Student Exhibition
  • Annual Spring Student Exhibition
  • Electives: Ceramics, Digital Art, Drawing, Enameling, Filmmaking, Painting, Photography, Sculpture; AP Art and Design (Drawing, and 2-D Art and Design)*
*classes subject to change
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1030 E. California Blvd
Pasadena, Ca 91106
626-396-6300
communications@polytechnic.org

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