Words and Music: Zach. End of Summer Studios

Zach spent a month at the MassArt Summer Studios this year. It's a great program for high school students interested in studio art (or fashion or jewelry or graphic arts). Everyone has to take a "2d and 3d fundamentals" course and "Issues and Images" class, then you can specialize in various disciplines. Zach took ceramics and photography.

They visited a lot of museums in the area like the MFA, Gardner, ICA, and the Harvard Sackler, and discussed the work there and what it meant, etc. During drawing, they got to work with live models for the first time. At one point, each student brought in their work for a critique, which Zach enjoyed alot! He said he got great feedback and ideas. It seems like they got a lot done in a short amount of time and it convinced him to continue to pursue the arts. I'm not sure I would have predicted this when he was 2 yrs. old, but it makes sense now!

Each class had a final project due at the end, which was included in the student show last Saturday. Above is his photo essay, which had to do with smiles. Yes, we had to pose one night about 11 or 12 for this one. (In fact, working late at night, sometimes w/ assistance, might have been a theme, too!)

The ceramics final project was quite interesting, since it was more conceptual than the work we had seen before. It has to do with opening up....to me, it looks very organic and has a lot of movement in it. A lot of people at the show seemed to be impressed by it. I think Zach wanted the glaze to be a bit different than it turned out. We're trying it out in our garden now. :)

For the 2D/3D classs, he did a wire sculpture - actually 4 of them, with 2 figures each. It's showing a sequence of a kick...i.e. someone kicking someone else and falling. Here it is at the show. (His teacher suggested a larger figure, so the last one is bigger, but he used it for effect to show the other one being dominated.)

I won't post all the comments from the instructors, but I will say that he did well there and is looking to attend next year! Hopefully he can get the application done early and we'll be done with it.