Current Creativity at Cate

By: Amelia Riepe '27

Cate’s art program sometimes receives less attention compared to academic classes and sports. However, with options from Ceramics to Camarata, Cate’s art program offers a diverse range of classes to fulfill your art requirement. In each of these classes, students work tirelessly all year to showcase their artistic abilities and the skills that they have gained each day in class. Here’s a glimpse of some of the current masterpieces being made in the art loft, theater, photo lab, and more! 

Students in Ms. Doyle and Ms. Sharpe’s Studio 1 class have taken on the daunting challenge of creating a life-size paper mâché face of any person they choose. Betsy Peters ‘27 describes her thoughts on this unique project, noting, “I think it's really cool working on a 3-dimensional surface, and later we will learn how to paint it. It is going to be really fun, although it is quite the learning curve.” Students in this class are first tasked with outlining the facial frame of the person they are making with cardboard strips. Then, they make a “cast” of tape around the outline to accentuate facial features, hair, and bone structure. A layer of paper mâché is glued around the structure to mimic skin, and then the fine details and face pigment are painted on. As Betsy shares, “This project is unique because it's a sculpture, a 3-dimensional surface, which is not really a medium that we work with very often. I think that it's interesting to not only construct the piece but also paint it, which is a combination of the knowledge we have been working on all year.” Students in Studio Art are using this project to combine all the skills that they have exercised throughout the year into one summative artwork. These skills include form-making, painting, cutting, hot-glue guns, and paper mâché.

Just downstairs from the bustling Art Loft, Camarata students fill the empty seats of the theater, singing songs written in languages around the world. When describing the song that the class is currently working on, Emi Kanda-Gleeson ‘27 comments, “Camarata is working on a song called Jumalo. It’s a Latvian song, and we are spending time working on the rhythm of the music.” As described by Fiona Pan ‘27, the rhythm of Jumalo is “gospel-like” and “has sudden changes and transitions.” By exploring songs in different languages, the Camarata ensemble can expand their technical skills while also gaining an appreciation for foreign music. The sudden shifts in tempo certainly pose a challenge for singers as it requires high levels of focus and concentration. Luckily, Camarata was granted the opportunity to learn about the nuances of the piece from a Latvian speaker. Emi describes this experience, “We also got a Latvian singer from Mr. Di Gennaro’s wife’s choir in Santa Barbara to come to Cate and teach us about Latvian culture and the pronunciation of the words so we could sing the song better.”

Studio Art and Camarata aren’t the only art classes that are busy. Pari Malik ‘27, a student in Photography 1, describes her current project, “We are doing abstract photography, which is taking pictures of things that aren’t what they seem. We use unique angles and other features so you can’t tell what the object actually is.” In this assignment, students are encouraged to step outside their comfort zone and observe how everyday sights can be transformed through different techniques. Pari elaborates on her new project, “We haven’t really done anything where you can’t really tell what the image is, so I think people are getting really creative with it. For example, a lot of people are doing blurred motion, different lighting, and some people are zooming in a ton so you can see the fine details.” After a unit of doing video-heavy projects, students are experimenting with all the different approaches to this assignment. The open ended nature of this assignment allows students to have full creative liberty over their process. The possibilities are endless, which makes this project a perfect way for Photography 1 students to showcase all the skills they have learned this year.