Creative Collaboration

“The students were infatuated and inspired by her.” That was the general reaction, perfectly summarized by Lower School Art Teacher Lisa Anderson, of the Collegiate School students when visiting artist in residence Maya Freelon arrived on campus. 

Freelon, a nationally acclaimed artist whose work has been featured in exhibits across the country, began her weeklong residency in March and worked with all three divisions of the School to engage in the art of collage and quilt making. 

In the Lower School, Freelon conducted workshops with students to construct a quilt of colorful tissue paper. The essential harmony of the piece is its variety, the colorful mosaic of tissue paper, which in its mesmerizing range of shape and hue shows the type of innovative collaboration that went into the piece’s creation. “The Lower School students responded really well to Maya,” Mrs. Anderson says. “You could tell that they were really excited by the opportunity of working with and learning from a professional artist.” 

In the Middle and Upper Schools, students were able to engage with Freelon in assemblies, where they were able to discuss the many opportunities available to contemporary artists and designers. Freelon also joined Seniors in Honors Art to discuss and evaluate their own work. 

“In general, as art educators at all divisions, we make a concerted effort to bring in professional artists as a means of motivating and inspiring students around a specific project,” says Upper School Art Teacher Pam Sutherland. “With Maya, who worked across all divisions simultaneously, this was an opportunity to experience collaboration — first and foremost the joy of physically making something together in the Lower School. The synergy that comes from her speaking to the Middle and Upper School students in their respective assemblies — with students guiding the discussion to discover what it even means to be an artist — is really valuable. And finally, for Seniors in Honors Art to have the opportunity to receive a guided critique assessing the direction of their current work has a great impact.” 

Freelon’s visit culminated in a work of creative collaboration, one that encouraged students to discover themselves as artists. “Art is a subject whose primary goal is to help students trust and invest in their true selves,” says Mrs. Sutherland. “Having a person from the outside come in who is doing just that is instrumental in modeling this awareness and orientation.”