Art

At Cumberland, students of Fine Arts are deeply immersed in art appreciation, art criticism, and the actual making of art. Their curriculum, developed and taught by a local artist who is also published novelist and magazine writer, is also enhanced through highly engaging lectures about art subjects, the personalities and lives of famous artists, field trips, and visits to the school by local artists. On the first day of class, the students learn what constitutes art, and from there the students learn how to judge art on three important levels: creative, technical, and emotional. The students’ technical knowledge of art is learned through the study of the acknowledged elements of art and the principles of design. The students also evaluate, through personal art projects created each week, the art of their classmates with the guidance of their teacher.

One of the academic and creative highlights of the school year is the students’ study of vexillology. In this always-anticipated, two-week curriculum of the art of flags, the students discover how an artistic object can also be functional at the deepest level in that art in flags represents nations, states, and political and personal movements. The students are also responsible, with the support of the teacher, for constructing their own fine arts lexicon…words and phrases, and their meanings, that they’ll remember and use for the rest of their lives as they intelligently and respectfully interact with art.