JCHS offers a wide range of visual arts instruction including studio art, photography, sculpture, and art history. Student art is incorporated into all aspects of the JCHS experience through collaboration with performing arts, gallery showcases and site-specific art installations throughout our campus. Our talented arts faculty are artists in their own right, and bring knowledge and experience to support our students in developing their own individual styles. Introduction to Studio Art explores the fundamentals of composition and design. The curriculum focuses on the strategies behind learning to draw and explores the essential element of color. Students can use our printing press to make relief prints, monotypes, Xerox photo transfer, and drypoints on Plexiglas. Intermediate Studio Art and Advanced Placement Studio Art classes allow students to continue developing skills in any of the media we have available.
Sculpture students work with many different materials and study the three-dimensional form. Wire, clay, plaster, found objects, and packing tape are some of the traditional and non-traditional materials you may use. Our art studio is equipped with a pottery wheel, glazes, and a kiln to fire both sculptural and functional ceramics pieces.
Using our on-campus darkroom equipped with four enlargers, photography students learn to develop, process, and print their own film. The Yearbook program is another great way to hone in on your photography, art and design skills, while also creating something your peers will always cherish. Looking through the yearbook at the end of each year is one of the most exciting moments for our school community.
All student artists have an opportunity to exhibit their finished work at the annual JCHS Arts Evening in May. Each year, our campus is transformed into an art gallery and performance space for spoken word and literary arts. Click here to visit our online Art Gallery!
What is your favorite thing about teaching?
Sharing my interests and passions with young people and then getting to learn from and laugh with them about their ideas and experiences. At JCHS, I appreciate the support and freedom I have to develop my curriculum. What is your favorite class project?
My favorite projects change each year, but this year I particularly loved the portrait project in the intro to studio art class. Students build upon the formal technical skills of line and value and use a grid to learn the proportions of the human face and head. They have to choose someone who is important to them and convey a psychological component that is captured in a photograph. They learn that it takes many hours to produce a polished piece, and they haven’t had that experience before. When it’s complete, they have an accomplished piece of work that they are really happy about. That is so satisfying. Hobbies/Passions:
These evolve and change. I like reading about art and history, I like gardening and cooking. In my studio I’ve been working on detailed colored pencil drawings made from collages of photos that I take with my camera phone. Low quality photos are fine because the real creative process is cutting up the photos and reassembling them to invent alternate versions of the world. These “alternate realities” become the drawings. This past year, my work was featured at the Rasmussen Art Gallery at the Pacific Union College. What do JCHS students say about you?
Probably that I am passionate about what I teach, maybe sometimes a little excitable. On other JCHS teachers:
I love being around such intelligent, humorous and compassionate teachers. The standards they set motivate and inspire me to better challenge my students in the classroom. I enjoy collaborating with other teachers to bring art into their classes. I recently created a presentation of art from the Russian Revolution era for Dean Kertesz’s Jewish studies class. In English class, they are reading Huckleberry Finn, and I shared examples of American artists from the 19th century, as well as contemporary art around themes including racism and slavery with the class. Art outside the classroom:
I teach art history and we’ve had some memorable experiences this year. We went to see a King Tut exhibit at the De Young museum after learning about that time period in class. We also recently learned about gothic architecture and had an opportunity to walk over to St. Dominic’s church to identify exterior and interior architectural elements. Other roles at JCHS:
I often get to work with the theater director on the sets for the drama productions. In the past, I have received the design and worked with my art students to execute it. For this past production, I essentially designed the set and then worked collaboratively with the director and crew to make it. I have also co-led the Visions of God art-based tefillah (morning reflection). Each morning the students participate in hands-on art projects that require a combination of intuition, practical skills, and aesthetic judgment in a visual response to themes discussed in scriptural texts. Advice to new students:
Pay attention. Be kind. Put in the work, you won’t regret it. Favorite book(s):
Habit of Being, Collected Letters of Flannery O’Conner, Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides, Blood Meridian by Cormack McCarthy, Endurance by Alfred Lansing Favorite quote:
“Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.” John Lennon What’s on your ipod right now?
The new Bonnie Prince Billy album, medieval music, Godspeed You Black Emperor and about ten Fresh Air podcasts that I still haven’t listened to. | 
Meet Jennifer Sturgill