Clinton Visual Arts

Clinton Arts Team Website: clintonart.weebly.com/parents.html

Mission

To foster visually literate students who can use critical skills to become informed participants of visual culture.

Vision

To use authentic arts education and a holistic approach  to transmit crucial critical modes of looking, understanding and expressing that students will use to interact with, and empower themselves within contemporary visual culture.

​Clinton Visual Arts has adopted the 8 Studio Habits Framework. These habits describe critical skills and dispositions that individuals use to interact with the art world meaningfully and successfully. Together they form a holistic picture of the student as an artist and member of visual culture. A simplified overview is available below as is an overlay of the studio habits onto a visualization of our instruction cycle.

8 Studio Habit Category Descriptor:

​1. Develop Craft
“I can use materials and techniques deliberately to achieve my goals”
2. Observe
“I can look and listen carefully to notice details”
3. Engage and Persist
“I can identify and solve problems by focusing on my work”
4. Stretch and Explore
“I can push myself with tools, materials and ideas in new ways”

​5. Understand the Art World
“I can think and talk respectfully about the art and artists around me”
6. Envision
“I can picture things, make predictions and imagine possibilities or problems” 
7. Express
“I can use work to express ideas effectively”
8. Reflect
“Learning to talk about and their work, the way they work and others”

​Primary (K-3) - Empowerment: 

• ​Derive meaning through failure and success through the lens of visual arts.
• ​Students are able to reflect on their process and describe and anticipate how their decisions affect the outcome of their ideas.

​ Elementary (3-5) - Knowledge:

• ​Solve visual problems using the Elements of Art and Principles of Design.
• ​Students are able to demonstrate fluency in the elements and principles by manipulating them to produce appropriate solutions to visual problems or by using them to understand and explain the decisions of other artists.

​Middle School (6-8) - Technique:

• Application and synthesis of content through the 8 Studio Habits of​ the Mind.
• Students are able to create and describe connections between disciplines and content by developing craft, engaging and persisting, envisioning, expressing, observing, reflecting, stretching and exploring and understanding the art world.

Meet our Art Teachers!

Mr. Peter Mariani

Peter Mariani is a graphic designer and educator from Kenosha Wisconsin.  After obtaining a bachelors degree in graphic design from Cedarville University, Mr. Mariani worked as the head of digital art for Muse Machine, a non-profit that works with the inner city youth in Dayton Ohio.  It was at this job Mr. Mariani discovered his passion for educating youth through visual arts.  He attended Columbia College to receive his MAT in art education with a special education endorsement.  He implements a Reggio approach while preparing his students to be life long learning using the 8 Studio Habits of Mind.   

Mr. William Wenzel 

​William Wenzel is a fine artist, commercial illustrator and educator from the Chicago area. After obtaining his Bachelors of Fine Arts from Savannah College of art And Design, Mr. Wenzel worked as a freelance illustrator and painter. He became deeply interested in visual arts education and received his Masters of Arts in Teaching from Columbia College Chicago. An integrated and interdisciplinary arts curriculum is the organizing principle within Mr. Wenzel’s classroom. The learning experiences provided to students will equip them with critical skills that can be brought outside of the art classroom and applied to other disciplines and contexts. Students will learn how to interpret visual culture and manipulate visual languages in a way that gives them access to more powerful expressive modes.