Visual Arts

Covering the school with the
fruits of creativity

The visual arts are a flourishing part of the Saint George’s environment. Just look on the Lower School hallway walls, where students’ colorful drawings, paintings, collages, and weavings grab your attention. The same is true for the Middle School’s walls, where thoughtful haiku poems accompany painted mosaics and student-cut paper masks smile down from a display on African culture. Walk just a little further to the Upper School Art Gallery to view a student exhibit of black and white photos of everyday objects from unusual angles.

All of this creativity begins with our teachers – each a professional painter, photographer, or ceramic artist – and our outstanding art facilities. The Lower School’s Art Room is a separate building packed with paper, paint, posters and busy students exploring subjects as diverse as Aboriginal-style patterns and cut-paper self-portraits. The fifth graders paint copies of French Impressionist masterpieces, then dress up like their artists – in top hats, overcoats and beards – to re-enact the Paris Salon of 1874 in the Davenport House’s refined atmosphere.

Middle and Upper School students expand their intuition, imagination and dexterity in the expansive art, photography, and pottery studios of the Fred and Claire Gilbert Art Complex. Renowned local artists demonstrate their techniques, while a Montana printmaker visits each year for a week of sharing with students the finer points of intaglio and drypoint etching. The results of all this activity brighten Saint George’s walls and are mirrored in the growing confidence and ability of our students.

There is not another high school in the area – in fact, very few anywhere – that offer instruction in traditional etching techniques.”

Judi Morgan Middle/Upper School Art Teacher, Artist