WEBSITES
http://bpsk12art.weebly.com/ (a resource for district art teachers, and the site for our online art exhibition)
www.burlingtonhighschoolart.org (for students, parents, and the community)
www.facebook.com/burlingtonhighschoolart
DEPARTMENT STAFF
George Ratkevich - Art & Design Program Coordinator
Lindsay Janco - art teacher, Marshall Simonds Middle School
Sarah Baldwin - art teacher, Marshall Simonds Middle School
Christina Chang - art teacher, Burlington High School
Alexandra Djordjevic - art teacher, Burlington High School
Courtney Fallon - art teacher, Pine Glen Elementary School
Kulwinder Kaur - Kindergarten art teacher, Francis Wyman Elementary School
Mojdeh Kazem - art teacher, Burlington High School
Keith March Mistler - art teacher, Marshall Simonds Middle School / Remote Academy (2020-2021 school year)
Stephen Scarpulla - art teacher, Fox Hill Elementary School
Lindsay Shepard - art teacher, Marshall Simonds Middle School
Lauren Angelo - art teacher, Francis Wyman Elementary School
Joanne Vigneau - art teacher, Burlington High School & Remote Academy (2020-2021 school year)
Donna York - art teacher, Memorial Elementary School
PURPOSE
The Art & Design program helps students develop their visual literacy (an understanding and appreciation of guiding concepts such as the elements and principles of design), creative problem solving, design thinking (a focus on steps in the process of making), and technical skills (craftsmanship). Students develop their Studio Habits of Mind (which comes out of the framework of Studio Thinking designed by practitioners at Project Zero at Harvard’s School of Education.). They develop their craft, becoming more technically skillful in using a wide range of tools, materials, and artistic processes, and they learn to take care of those tools and their studio workspaces. They begin to see and embrace problems as opportunities, develop focus, and they learn to persist and persevere at tasks. Art students learn to envision and imagine, thinking creatively, developing their ability to come up with new and better ideas. They learn to plan well and work through the many, sometimes messy, stages of the creative process. They express themselves, making art that conveys ideas, feelings, or personal meanings. They observe, looking closely and carefully at things, attending to nuance, noticing the small things that the casual observer won’t. They become more and more sensitive to the natural environment as they work from observation, memory, and imagination. They reflect on what they and their fellow artists have done, learning how to look at and talk about art, to defend their work, to take in and process constructive criticism from their peers. They stretch and explore, reaching beyond what they thought they could do. They learn to embrace opportunities, discover through play, and learn from their mistakes. They work and interact with one another in the community that is the art class, and they share their work with their school, family, and community. They make connections, learning about culture and history, current practices and innovation, and interacting with others through their study of art and art-making. We believe that students’ art classes help balance their academic classes, and that art-making is an essential, enriching experience that helps to more fully develop a well-rounded person.
Hybrid learning continued into Spring 2021. With the change to remote and hybrid learning, the Art & Design teachers took to heart the guidelines and recommendations of the Massachusetts Art Education Association in planning and revising curriculum for the 20-21 school year, to do fewer things and do them well:
HIGHLIGHTS
To eliminate the need to share tools and materials during the pandemic, in 2020-21 art teachers assembled individual art kits for every student, providing supplies to be used in either the classroom or at home. Elementary and middle school teachers traveled from classroom to classroom to teach lessons. Students and teachers returned to the art rooms in all schools for the 2021-22 school year.
The program again budgeted for Adobe Creative Cloud Access to be made available to every art student in BHS as needed. Students were able to get one-year named-user licenses to the Creative Cloud to be installed on one computer in the school and another at home, allowing courses such as Computer Graphics and Photography to be taught more smoothly during hybrid learning.
Student work was published or displayed in Collab, the high school’s literary magazine, the BHS yearbook, the Regional High School Art Exhibition hosted by the Lexington Arts & Crafts Society (LexArt), and in the high school’s Cambridge Street Gallery, which continues to provide exhibition space to BHS alumni artists, community members, students, and faculty.
A drawing by Jack Giles (BHS Class of 2021) and a photograph by Paul Fauller (Class of 2022) were selected for inclusion in the 2021 Emerging Young Artists Juried Exhibition, a highly competitive New England juried exhibition hosted by UMass Dartmouth's College of Visual and Performing Arts. The exhibition was online this year, featured on the UMass Dartmouth CVPA website from January 22 through February 6, 2021. University of Massachusetts Dartmouth College of Visual and Performing Arts invited students, family, relatives, and guests to attend the reception to celebrate these talented students and their accomplishments.
Students earned recognition in this year's annual regional Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. The regional Scholastic Art & Writing Awards received a total of 8,609 total submissions between the art and writing categories: 5,877 total art submissions and 2,732 total writing submissions.
WRITING
Veronica Chang
Honorable Mention
Personal Essay & Memoir
How to Fit into American Schools
Navya Garg
Gold Key
Personal Essay & Memoir
My Mother Found My Prince Charming
Quinn Mattson
Honorable Mention
Short Story
Shall Not Be
ART
Paul Fauller
Honorable Mention
Photography
vacuum
Paul Fauller
Silver Key
Photography
on the verge
Paul Fauller
Honorable Mention
Photography
i am not an object.
Navya Garg
Gold Key
Photography
Hope
Navya Garg
Silver Key
Photography
Sugar Strawberry
Navya Garg
Honorable Mention
Photography
Chameleon
Jack Giles
Honorable Mention
Painting
Unsung Legacy
Abraham Mudoola
Honorable Mention
Ceramics & Glass
Vase bent
Anna Perl, Grade
Gold Key
Drawing & Illustration
Decapitation
Anna Perl
Silver Key
Drawing & Illustration
1636 Amsterdam
Caroline Sciarratta
Honorable Mention
Photography
a street stranger's smile
Caroline Sciarratta
Silver Key
Photography
Ceramic Stallion
Whereas in previous years the Gold and Silver Key award-winning work was exhibited in a large exhibition hall, in 2021 the Massachusetts Scholastic Art and Writing Awards regional exhibition was posted online.:
Regional Gold Key Art
Regional Gold Key Writing
Regional Silver Key Art
Regional Silver Key Writing
After being reviewed at the national level by panels of creative professionals, Anna Perl (BHS Class of 2022) earned a Gold Medal at the national level for her painting "Decapitation.”
The artistic talents of BHS student artists were also on display at the Lexington Arts and Crafts Society (LexArt) for the 25th Annual Regional High School Art Majors Show. The work of students from Bedford, Burlington, Winchester, Waltham, and Minuteman Regional Vocational Technical high schools was also on view. Burlington students whose work was on exhibition include: Alexia Hamilton, Georgia Doherty, Isabelle James, Jaden Torres, Carlie Mattson, Chloe Poles, Navya Garg, Paul Fauller, Kacey Pustizzi, Rose Hanafin, Lainey Gaiero, Caroline Sciarratta, Benjamin Calandrella, Alexa Meehan, Anna Otis, Genevieve Kugonza, Abraham Mudoola, Sydney Hovasse, Heather Murphy, Thanya Weadick, John Giles, Nicholas Abreu, Anna Perl, Sophya Viglione, Sharon Zou, Michela Giordano, Serena Hawkins, and Reece McLean
At the end of the 2020-2021 school year, the AP Studio Art students held an online exhibition reception of their portfolios, to which parents and teachers were invited and at which each student discussed their oeuvre.
At the end of the 2020-2021 school year, Sydney Hovasse received the first Cynara Ferrao Scholarship. This $500 scholarship was generously funded by the family and friends of Cynara Ferrao, a graduate of the high school and a mainstay in the art program who passed two years ago, for a “BHS student who shows a passion for fashion or art as Cynara did, and would like to further their education at a college/university focused on art.” Sydney Hovasse is now majoring in Costume Design at Boston University.
Nicholas Abreu received the Vickie Graham Award, a $500 scholarship generously funded by the family of former BHS art student Vickie Graham, a 2001 graduate of Burlington High School, for a deserving student attending a four-year college majoring in Art or Computer Graphics. Nicholas Abreu is now attending Boston University to study Art Education.
Jack Giles received The BHS Portfolio Award, an award of $500 for exceptional work in an artistic discipline. John (Jack) Giles is now attending The University of Maryland to study Engineering.
Artist Cyrus Aghakhani spoke via videoconference to BHS art classes from his home in Iran. In this virtual workshop, Mr. Aghakhani shared his artististic work with students and demonstrated his methods, including the technique of sgraffito, scratching a surface to create a variety of tonal values. Cyrus Aghakhani is a professional graphic designer, painter, and art professor based in Iran. He has illustrated many books and has held many solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Cyrus is on the faculty at the University of Semnan and is married to another successful artist. One of the artist’s original artworks was purchased and loaned to BHS.
Some of the art teachers and their classes continue to be involved in the Burlington Sculpture Park (burlingtonsculpturepark.org). The park is located to the left of Grandview Farm and Marion Tavern, across from the corner of the town common. The selection of the sculptures was greatly informed by student participation two years ago. Students in many of Burlington's art classes from grades 1-12 voted on over 40 works submitted to The BSP Committee through the New England Sculptors Association.
CHANGES
To address remote learning needs at the elementary level during the pandemic, BHS art teacher Joanne Vigneau and MSMS art teacher Keith March Mistler worked in the Remote Academy for the 20-21 school year, teaching fully remote elementary grade students. Mojdeh Kazem and Lindsay Shepard joined the BHS and MSMS faculties, respectively, to fill the temporarily vacated positions. Both Ms. Kazem and Ms. Shepard continued in those positions for the 2021-22 school year, after Mrs. Vigneau retired and Mr. March Mistler took a leave at the end of that school year. Art instruction was added to Kindergarten starting in the 2021-22 school year. Ruby Kulwinder Kaur joined the faculty of Francis Wyman Elementary School as the kindergarten art teacher there starting in the fall of 2021.
http://bpsk12art.weebly.com/ (a resource for district art teachers, and the site for our online art exhibition)
www.burlingtonhighschoolart.org (for students, parents, and the community)
www.facebook.com/burlingtonhighschoolart
DEPARTMENT STAFF
George Ratkevich - Art & Design Program Coordinator
Lindsay Janco - art teacher, Marshall Simonds Middle School
Sarah Baldwin - art teacher, Marshall Simonds Middle School
Christina Chang - art teacher, Burlington High School
Alexandra Djordjevic - art teacher, Burlington High School
Courtney Fallon - art teacher, Pine Glen Elementary School
Kulwinder Kaur - Kindergarten art teacher, Francis Wyman Elementary School
Mojdeh Kazem - art teacher, Burlington High School
Keith March Mistler - art teacher, Marshall Simonds Middle School / Remote Academy (2020-2021 school year)
Stephen Scarpulla - art teacher, Fox Hill Elementary School
Lindsay Shepard - art teacher, Marshall Simonds Middle School
Lauren Angelo - art teacher, Francis Wyman Elementary School
Joanne Vigneau - art teacher, Burlington High School & Remote Academy (2020-2021 school year)
Donna York - art teacher, Memorial Elementary School
PURPOSE
The Art & Design program helps students develop their visual literacy (an understanding and appreciation of guiding concepts such as the elements and principles of design), creative problem solving, design thinking (a focus on steps in the process of making), and technical skills (craftsmanship). Students develop their Studio Habits of Mind (which comes out of the framework of Studio Thinking designed by practitioners at Project Zero at Harvard’s School of Education.). They develop their craft, becoming more technically skillful in using a wide range of tools, materials, and artistic processes, and they learn to take care of those tools and their studio workspaces. They begin to see and embrace problems as opportunities, develop focus, and they learn to persist and persevere at tasks. Art students learn to envision and imagine, thinking creatively, developing their ability to come up with new and better ideas. They learn to plan well and work through the many, sometimes messy, stages of the creative process. They express themselves, making art that conveys ideas, feelings, or personal meanings. They observe, looking closely and carefully at things, attending to nuance, noticing the small things that the casual observer won’t. They become more and more sensitive to the natural environment as they work from observation, memory, and imagination. They reflect on what they and their fellow artists have done, learning how to look at and talk about art, to defend their work, to take in and process constructive criticism from their peers. They stretch and explore, reaching beyond what they thought they could do. They learn to embrace opportunities, discover through play, and learn from their mistakes. They work and interact with one another in the community that is the art class, and they share their work with their school, family, and community. They make connections, learning about culture and history, current practices and innovation, and interacting with others through their study of art and art-making. We believe that students’ art classes help balance their academic classes, and that art-making is an essential, enriching experience that helps to more fully develop a well-rounded person.
Hybrid learning continued into Spring 2021. With the change to remote and hybrid learning, the Art & Design teachers took to heart the guidelines and recommendations of the Massachusetts Art Education Association in planning and revising curriculum for the 20-21 school year, to do fewer things and do them well:
- Make strategic reductions across the curriculum
- Focus on fewer standards more deeply
- Create a smaller number of well-crafted lessons and experiences that nurture relationships, support youth resilience, and build knowledge and skills.
- Blend synchronous and asynchronous learning
- Provide access to ALL learners
- Temporarily shift focus from the Creating standards of the MA Visual Arts Frameworks to the other three standards: Presenting, Connecting, and Responding.
HIGHLIGHTS
To eliminate the need to share tools and materials during the pandemic, in 2020-21 art teachers assembled individual art kits for every student, providing supplies to be used in either the classroom or at home. Elementary and middle school teachers traveled from classroom to classroom to teach lessons. Students and teachers returned to the art rooms in all schools for the 2021-22 school year.
The program again budgeted for Adobe Creative Cloud Access to be made available to every art student in BHS as needed. Students were able to get one-year named-user licenses to the Creative Cloud to be installed on one computer in the school and another at home, allowing courses such as Computer Graphics and Photography to be taught more smoothly during hybrid learning.
Student work was published or displayed in Collab, the high school’s literary magazine, the BHS yearbook, the Regional High School Art Exhibition hosted by the Lexington Arts & Crafts Society (LexArt), and in the high school’s Cambridge Street Gallery, which continues to provide exhibition space to BHS alumni artists, community members, students, and faculty.
A drawing by Jack Giles (BHS Class of 2021) and a photograph by Paul Fauller (Class of 2022) were selected for inclusion in the 2021 Emerging Young Artists Juried Exhibition, a highly competitive New England juried exhibition hosted by UMass Dartmouth's College of Visual and Performing Arts. The exhibition was online this year, featured on the UMass Dartmouth CVPA website from January 22 through February 6, 2021. University of Massachusetts Dartmouth College of Visual and Performing Arts invited students, family, relatives, and guests to attend the reception to celebrate these talented students and their accomplishments.
Students earned recognition in this year's annual regional Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. The regional Scholastic Art & Writing Awards received a total of 8,609 total submissions between the art and writing categories: 5,877 total art submissions and 2,732 total writing submissions.
WRITING
Veronica Chang
Honorable Mention
Personal Essay & Memoir
How to Fit into American Schools
Navya Garg
Gold Key
Personal Essay & Memoir
My Mother Found My Prince Charming
Quinn Mattson
Honorable Mention
Short Story
Shall Not Be
ART
Paul Fauller
Honorable Mention
Photography
vacuum
Paul Fauller
Silver Key
Photography
on the verge
Paul Fauller
Honorable Mention
Photography
i am not an object.
Navya Garg
Gold Key
Photography
Hope
Navya Garg
Silver Key
Photography
Sugar Strawberry
Navya Garg
Honorable Mention
Photography
Chameleon
Jack Giles
Honorable Mention
Painting
Unsung Legacy
Abraham Mudoola
Honorable Mention
Ceramics & Glass
Vase bent
Anna Perl, Grade
Gold Key
Drawing & Illustration
Decapitation
Anna Perl
Silver Key
Drawing & Illustration
1636 Amsterdam
Caroline Sciarratta
Honorable Mention
Photography
a street stranger's smile
Caroline Sciarratta
Silver Key
Photography
Ceramic Stallion
Whereas in previous years the Gold and Silver Key award-winning work was exhibited in a large exhibition hall, in 2021 the Massachusetts Scholastic Art and Writing Awards regional exhibition was posted online.:
Regional Gold Key Art
Regional Gold Key Writing
Regional Silver Key Art
Regional Silver Key Writing
After being reviewed at the national level by panels of creative professionals, Anna Perl (BHS Class of 2022) earned a Gold Medal at the national level for her painting "Decapitation.”
The artistic talents of BHS student artists were also on display at the Lexington Arts and Crafts Society (LexArt) for the 25th Annual Regional High School Art Majors Show. The work of students from Bedford, Burlington, Winchester, Waltham, and Minuteman Regional Vocational Technical high schools was also on view. Burlington students whose work was on exhibition include: Alexia Hamilton, Georgia Doherty, Isabelle James, Jaden Torres, Carlie Mattson, Chloe Poles, Navya Garg, Paul Fauller, Kacey Pustizzi, Rose Hanafin, Lainey Gaiero, Caroline Sciarratta, Benjamin Calandrella, Alexa Meehan, Anna Otis, Genevieve Kugonza, Abraham Mudoola, Sydney Hovasse, Heather Murphy, Thanya Weadick, John Giles, Nicholas Abreu, Anna Perl, Sophya Viglione, Sharon Zou, Michela Giordano, Serena Hawkins, and Reece McLean
At the end of the 2020-2021 school year, the AP Studio Art students held an online exhibition reception of their portfolios, to which parents and teachers were invited and at which each student discussed their oeuvre.
At the end of the 2020-2021 school year, Sydney Hovasse received the first Cynara Ferrao Scholarship. This $500 scholarship was generously funded by the family and friends of Cynara Ferrao, a graduate of the high school and a mainstay in the art program who passed two years ago, for a “BHS student who shows a passion for fashion or art as Cynara did, and would like to further their education at a college/university focused on art.” Sydney Hovasse is now majoring in Costume Design at Boston University.
Nicholas Abreu received the Vickie Graham Award, a $500 scholarship generously funded by the family of former BHS art student Vickie Graham, a 2001 graduate of Burlington High School, for a deserving student attending a four-year college majoring in Art or Computer Graphics. Nicholas Abreu is now attending Boston University to study Art Education.
Jack Giles received The BHS Portfolio Award, an award of $500 for exceptional work in an artistic discipline. John (Jack) Giles is now attending The University of Maryland to study Engineering.
Artist Cyrus Aghakhani spoke via videoconference to BHS art classes from his home in Iran. In this virtual workshop, Mr. Aghakhani shared his artististic work with students and demonstrated his methods, including the technique of sgraffito, scratching a surface to create a variety of tonal values. Cyrus Aghakhani is a professional graphic designer, painter, and art professor based in Iran. He has illustrated many books and has held many solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Cyrus is on the faculty at the University of Semnan and is married to another successful artist. One of the artist’s original artworks was purchased and loaned to BHS.
Some of the art teachers and their classes continue to be involved in the Burlington Sculpture Park (burlingtonsculpturepark.org). The park is located to the left of Grandview Farm and Marion Tavern, across from the corner of the town common. The selection of the sculptures was greatly informed by student participation two years ago. Students in many of Burlington's art classes from grades 1-12 voted on over 40 works submitted to The BSP Committee through the New England Sculptors Association.
CHANGES
To address remote learning needs at the elementary level during the pandemic, BHS art teacher Joanne Vigneau and MSMS art teacher Keith March Mistler worked in the Remote Academy for the 20-21 school year, teaching fully remote elementary grade students. Mojdeh Kazem and Lindsay Shepard joined the BHS and MSMS faculties, respectively, to fill the temporarily vacated positions. Both Ms. Kazem and Ms. Shepard continued in those positions for the 2021-22 school year, after Mrs. Vigneau retired and Mr. March Mistler took a leave at the end of that school year. Art instruction was added to Kindergarten starting in the 2021-22 school year. Ruby Kulwinder Kaur joined the faculty of Francis Wyman Elementary School as the kindergarten art teacher there starting in the fall of 2021.