Visual Arts >>

The St. Bernard’s Art Department is committed to providing students with instruction in the arts and hands-on visual literacy skills in various forms of media. The art department currently consists of high school classes in Ceramics, Art Foundations, Graphic Design, and Yearbook.

The Ceramics class introduces students to various techniques in handbuilding and throwing pottery. In this one-year course students learn how to throw pottery on the wheel, such as bowls, vases, cups with handles, and so on, and they also learn many handbuilding techniques such as pinch, slab, coil, and modeling, which are the basis for such assignments as coil-built vases, relief tiles, slab boxes and more. Students work with two different types of clay, low-fire earthenware for hand built pieces, and high-fire stoneware for wheel-thrown pottery. Many different types of glazes, from low-fire to high-fire, underglazes and overglazes are used to create different surface effects and colors. Students learn ceramic vocabulary and assist in loading and unloading the kiln and keeping the ceramics studio functioning optimally.

Art Foundations covers a broad range of lessons and serves to teach students a basic understanding of art methods and art history. Students learn the elements of art and the principles of design through the various projects. Students begin the year with learning how to draw, from contour lines to full-scale value drawings. Other two-dimensional projects include painting with acrylics, collage, and printmaking. Three-dimensional projects consist of sculpture using clay and wire, and 3-D and mixed media collage. Learning the history of art traditions and their contemporary manifestations are an important part of Art Foundations.

Graphic Design is geared toward providing students with exciting assignments that teach them computer literacy using design and page layout programs. Projects include Photoshop flowers, self-portraits, personal posters, and more. Students also come up with their own fictional business and create a business identity package complete with letterhead, envelope, and business card. Flyers, brochures, movie posters (they even make up their own movie) are also part of the curriculum. Students learn how a work of design is a result of how the composition of the design elements creates mood, style, message, and a look.

The Yearbook class provides students with journalism skills necessary to produce the annual yearbook. Students learn and practice how report and write stories, headlines and captions, planning, shooting, and editing photographs, designing yearbook pages and spreads, selling and designing advertising, and conducting a successful yearbook sales campaign. Since the coursework results in the current volume of the school’s yearbook, it is critical that students are committed and responsible for producing a book in which the school and the community can take pride.