VISUAL ARTS - THE DETAILS/LINKS ___________________________________________________________________________
VISIT:
our Current News/Blog & pages (in the menu bar to the left)
NEWSLETTER - Visual Arts Department (pre pandemic)
WHY STUDY VISUAL ARTS
top tips for success in the visual arts.pdf
JOIN:
the MMHS Visual Arts New Classroom (code: 3vseq44)
Our Mindful Community Galleries
Creative Land & Peoples Acknowledgement
Ongoing Creative Courses, Contests & Offerings
EMPOWERMENT THROUGH CREATIVITY
The Visual Arts enrich our lives, serving physical, social and communicative functions, deepening our life experience and compelling us to extend our thinking and connections. Education through the Visual Arts is self-development, which increases personal awareness and experiences of diversity, builds physical, intellectual and emotional skills, strong self-discipline, responsible work habits, personal innovation, and life long tools for personal wellness and professional achievement. Engaging with our offerings in Visual Arts, Visual Design and Photography helps students to understand themselves and the world, fostering foundational skills for now and the future.
The Visual Arts enrich all of us and are beneficial to every student and all pathways.
Our Department offers a fulsome educational experience, designed to involve all facets of art: studio, theory, history, analysis and appreciation. Whatever the aim, students become accustomed to the process of turning ideas into refined products with attention to project goals, specific criteria and fine detail through the use of essential critical thinking/creative process models, while also experiencing open-ended discovery and support for personal creative directions and needs. We utilize a range of approaches to image making, honouring artistic traditions and personal expression while embracing modern technologies and trends.
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WHY ART?
"... Art is not just ornamental, an enhancement of life, but a path in itself,
a way out of the predictable and conventional, a map to self discovery." - Gabrielle Roth
“Don’t overlook education in the arts. There has been a tendency for students today to study the hard sciences, business or computers. An arts training will provide the ability to think logically and that’s the commodity that is in the shortest supply in business. Business and technology change. What you know now may be a long way removed from what you’ll actually be doing. Studying the arts will develop skills that can help you in any career.” - Warren Goldring, Chairman and CEO of AGF Management
“… the basic problem gripping the … workplace is not interest rates or inflation [but] the crisis of creativity. Ideas … are what built American business. And it is the arts that build ideas … Arts education programs can ...better prepare workers for the twenty-first century …[T]he skills the arts teach – creative thinking, problem-solving and risk-taking, and teamwork and communications – are precisely the tools the workforce of tomorrow will need.” - Richard Gurin, president and CEO of Binney & Smith, Inc.
Art is about changing what we see in our everyday lives and representing it in such a way that it gives us hope. The beauty of art is that it allows you to slow down, and for a moment, things that once seemed unfamiliar become precious to you. - Kehinde Wiley
“Art is not so much expressing oneself, as it is discovering oneself.” (Anawanitia)
"Art is the freedom to be yourself." –Kahelu
”I picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapons against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, poverty.” – Gordon Parks
“I think art certainly is the vehicle for us to develop any new ideas, to be creative, to extend our imagination, to change the current conditions.” --Ai Weiwei
“Every time I have had a problem, I have confronted it with the ax of art.”-- Yayoi Kusama
I believe art is a connection, like passing on a flame. There are ways to speak that can transform things, which has less to do with authority but is more about resourcefulness and ingenuity. - Wengechi Mutu
Design is about the betterment of our lives poetically, aesthetically, experientially, sensorially, and emotionally. - Karim Rashid -
“An education in the arts provides people with a competitive advantage when it comes to getting a job.”
- Ian Scott, Chief Hiring Officer at William Mercer
“The biggest gap in business’s array of tools to improve productivity is creativity. And I think the way to learn creativity is from artists.” -Graeme MacDonald, former Northern Telecom executive, president of the Banff Centre
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go where we've already been. If (creative) process drives the outcome we may not know where we're going, but we will know we want to be there. - Bruce Mau
"The arts are not a frill. The arts are a response to our individuality and our nature, and help to shape our identity.
What is there that can transcend deep difference and stubborn divisions? The arts. They have a wonderful
universality. Art has the potential to unify. It can speak in many languages without a translator. The arts do not
discriminate. The arts can lift us up." – Barbara Jordan
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” – Albert Einstein
"I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for." -
Georgia O'Keeffe
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A VISUAL LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
While learning remotely, our MMMHS Introductory Visual Arts students have reflected
on land, stewardship First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples and the contemporary work
of FNMI artists. They offer their own Visual Acknowledgment, through mindful
personal inquiry into the universal practices of fibre arts and the inherent symbolic value
and connectedness found there. The acknowledgment is available through link or QR code.
https://docs.virtual acknowledgment (to self pace viewing, click the forward arrow/tap screen or mouse)
Walk with us
in tradition, diversity, innovation & awareness . sample coursework by Anna C. & Emily- AWD3M1(Middleton) photo, hand rendering & digital software
Images: Liane, Carmen, Emily, Kelly
Images: Michelle, Carmen, Madeline
Explore our pages to learn more: news, courses, portfolios ...
For additional information, contact our Visual Arts Team:
K. Middleton -Department Head, K. Kong, M. Perez
~ Art is not just ornamental, an enhancement of life.
It is a path in itself, a way out of the predictable and conventional, a map to self discovery. - Gabrielle Roth
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K.Middleton, Subject Head, Visual Arts, MMHS, YRDSB