Arts Week is a week where Brooks students as well as the teacher present all the different forms of art they have been working on (you can see a few photo galleries created by Chloe Neal featuring student work by clicking here). One of the art faculty we have here at Brooks is John Famera. Him and his students are also participating in Art Week and here’s what he had to say in a recent interview I had with him.
Donjanae Johnson: Mr. Famera, what does Art Week mean to you?
John Famera: Well “Arts Week” is a curation of all the visual arts at Brooks College Prep. It’s a time in which we want to display the students’ work, where they are at currently in their practice, their skill level, and it’s a celebration of what they have produced so far. It’s also a time in which the performing arts students – members of the instrumental music ensembles and chorus - will be able to showcase their skills. This is the first year where are doing two “Arts Weeks:” in prior years we only had one at the end of the year, but this time we decided to have two because we wanted to align with the performing arts performances so, while the performing arts are having their music concert downstairs, the curation of all of the visual art classes will be displayed. That way, people who are coming in to see the show will be able see all the students’ visual work.
DJ: What type of art work are your students doing?
JF: My students are currently working on realistic drawings: they are practicing drawing to create an accurate depiction of an object composition they’re looking at. That requires practicing hand eye coordination, contour drawing skills, and adding shading on to their drawing to create the illusion of three dimensions, texture, and contrast. We have displayed our “Still Life” drawings, which count as our summative assessment. It took the students almost the whole unit, which was five weeks, and the result was a still life drawing. So the still life project is what I hung downstairs [in the Performing Arts Building’s lobby], and it’s a black and white drawing that the students did of five image compositions with flowers and containers.
DJ: What is your favorite part of Arts Week?
JF: My Favorite part of Arts Week is to have all of the different projects displayed in one area. I enjoy how you can go down there and you can see, for instance, photography from Mr. Mitchell’s AP Photo Class; you can see Digital Imaging 1 “Cartoon Reality” projects; right next to that you have “Still Life” projects. So you have these projects that are very different, side-by-side together and you can see a lot of different media all in one place. You also have Ms. Martinez, who added painting and drawing to her assignments, as well as sculptures. So you have digital imaging, photography, painting, drawing and sculpture. On top of that, if you go to the concert tonight, you get to hear a concert too! So were showing you all of the Brooks visual and performing arts in one fine neat package!
DJ: Thank you Mr. Famera. I appreciate your time.
JF: Thank you. Come back any time!