Art Program

The Kindergarten through fourth grade art program provides a wide range of art media and experiences to all students. It is our belief that an education of the whole student should include paint, clay, drawing, and hands-on exploration of one's ability to invent and discover. Our focus is on the process of creativity and the unique problem solving potential found in art as a discipline.

In the upper grades, art classes at DCS provide a smorgasbord of media: drawing and painting, pastels, collage, design, perspective, sculpture, textile work, and multimedia creations. Our program is designed to give students a taste of a broad variety of creative possibilities while introducing them to the artistic vocabulary and art history. To celebrate the exceptional diversity we enjoy at DCS, our students look at and work with art forms from many different cultures, learning the value of individual differences and the joy of collaboration with multiple viewpoints.

Within a marvelous variety of art forms, our students learn about the specific possibilities different media allow while they also develop their artistic skills, deepen their facility with color and form, light, space and motion, as they practice the rules of good composition, balance, and proportion. They also develop their perceptual skills, visual fluency, ingenuity, resourcefulness, self-reliance, and good individual and cooperative work habits while they learn to plan before they act.

Over and above the development of artistic literacy and competence, DCS students are encouraged to expand their imaginations, gain confidence in their own talent, enjoy the deepening of the sense of self that artistic expression can foster, and to have a good time with their art.