Get to the Gallery: Portfolio Season Just Around the Corner

It is almost Portfolio Season at Colorado Academy, the time of year when Upper School students, faculty, and staff take part of their lunch break to drop in to the school’s on-campus Bonfils Gallery for an impressive series of Senior Portfolio Shows. Gallery goers come to engage with art and the artists. Almost every Thursday, starting in January and running for nearly four months, artists present their work, usually in pairs. The art can include photography, painting, interactive multi-media, pen and ink drawings, printmaking, installation art, sculpture, ceramics, digital art or video portfolios.

 

The number of portfolio students this year (27) rivals record-breaking years (31 last year); that is noteworthy since Portfolio shows are a more than 20-year-year tradition for seniors in the CA.  Students apply for competitive admission to the Portfolio Program. This extended art course is rigorous.  Requirements include a peer and faculty Portfolio Review, six trimesters of coursework, and a final gallery shows.

 

CA art instructors say the skills students develop through the Portfolio Program continue to serve them through their lives.  Creating their art and mounting a show on deadline teaches students how to do their research, develop ideas and concepts, envision and organize a major project, manage their time and materials, make decisions, and communicate with teachers and peers. Past shows have consisted of just one piece of work to more than 80 pieces. They have to decide with whom they will show; then, they have to work collaboratively to design the gallery space and build the show. Teachers say in addition to working toward mastery of a medium, the inevitable obstacles that come with the complexity of the process makes this very real-world.

 

January 22: Theresa Ho/Kersten Butler                     

January 29:  Alex Walsh/Alex Clinkscales                          

February 5:  Marin Mccoy/Carrie Fritzinger/Caroline Reisch          

February 19: Sammy Kelley/Tatiana Goderstad

February 26: Claudia Morse/Mackenzie Timbel

March 5: Molly Magid/Henley Hall

March 19: Harrison Chang/Trace Montgomery               

April 2: Jourdan Kidd/Justine Jones

April 9: Rachel Weeks/Alec Hopping/Sam Kumagai

April 16: Eliza Samuelson/Jared Munn

April 23: Sterre Van Ede/Hannah Gohl

April 30: JP Kneen/Pryce Batey/Skylar Deahl