VISUAL Arts

Our lower school art studio hums with constant energy, as girls across grades learn to take risks, problem solve, translate their ideas, take responsibility, practice a discipline, and make discriminating choices. Girls work with a variety of materials and ideas and come to trust their own creative process. Each girl discovers a personal haven in the art room where her individual talents are valued and celebrated.

Our art faculty collaborates with homeroom teachers to develop new projects each year that connect thematically to units of study and to exhibitions currently on view around the city. Hewitt artists learn from the outset that there is a wide, diverse world of artistic expression in New York City, and they eagerly embrace its influences. By fourth grade, our artists explore personal ideas and experiences through various artistic media, including drawing, painting, mixed media, collage, wool, and sculpture.

Hewitt's lower school art program emphasizes effort, participation, originality of ideas, and the process of art making. Art lessons are designed to increase skill level, reflect the interests of the students, and support students as they work toward demonstrating understanding of concepts, original thinking, and quality of craftsmanship.

Hewitt educates girls to see and think critically about the world through multiple lenses. Our middle school visual arts program exposes students to a wide range of media as they work on 2D, 3D, and digital projects. 

In fifth and sixth grades, students explore the creative process and their own artistic expression. They experiment with mixed media creation and practice working with a range of mediums and materials, including clay, printmaking, and sketchbooks. In seventh and eighth grades, students are exposed to ceramics, painting and drawing, and graphic and digital design, each of which they can pursue through specialized courses in our high school.

Upper school artists are serious practitioners, eager to explore new media and also delve deep into their understanding of form and craft. Introductory courses in ceramics, photography, studio art, painting, and filmmaking ensure that students build the strong foundation they will need to perform advanced work in these subjects as juniors and seniors. 

The opportunity to integrate technology and traditional art forms abounds through the innovative relationship between our upper school technology and visual arts departments. The program emphasizes the power of artistic expression, the rigors of learning to work with material toward a given purpose, the joy of play, the necessity of risk-taking, and the importance of seeing failure as a means to achieving the right end.