2025 Pre-K–Grade 8 Art Showcase

“View-Finder,” the theme of the 2025 Pre-K–Grade 8 Art Showcase, takes inspiration from the iconic toy that was first introduced in 1939, as well as honoring the perspectives that each Colorado Academy artist brings to art spaces and their works.

 

Pre-K

The youngest artists in this showcase are building their artist practices and mindset by learning that meaningful art takes time and many steps. Through this multi-day project, students used large motor movements to trace their body contours before applying fine motor control to add paint, texture, and their written names.

 

Kindergarten

Kindergarten artists experimented with chemical resistance and absorption by layering oil pastels with watercolors, salt, and glitter paint. They also used the process of wet felting, combined with fabric collage.

 

Grade 1

First Grade artists dedicated months of work to their creative process of planning, testing, and construction to transform paper, wood, and polymer clay into fully functioning marble-roller games. As First Graders they are developing  “schematic skills,” combining realism and structural logic in their work, building the hand-eye coordination and engineering knowledge to create a functioning art piece.

 

Grade 2

Second Grade artists followed an iterative “plan-create-reflect” process to develop a deeply personal W.O.W. (Wonderful Original Work of Art) centered on the theme of “Family Fun.” Students synthesized drawing, painting, and collage techniques to capture moments of joy, refined their pieces through peer feedback, and designed custom borders to complete their vision.

 

Grade 3

Third Grade artists explored identity and aspiration through large-scale works centered on personal character traits or their hopes and dreams. Utilizing the W.O.W. (Wonderful Original Work of Art) creative process, students had autonomous freedom to choose to express their ideas through techniques in drawing, painting, and collage on paper or canvas.

Third Graders also created papier-mâché animal sculptures, part of a larger collaboration between art class and library class in which students developed a research project focused on a chosen marine animal.

 

Grade 4

Fourth Graders completed a Notan paper collage project, in which they followed a scaffolded artistic process of understanding the art form and practicing and experimenting different strategies and techniques in order to create unique compositions that express each artist’s creative voice.

 

 

Grade 5

Fifth Grade works come from a photography unit, in which students learned about the different elements of art as well as the principles of design. Over the course of this project, students took guided photo walks with the objective of capturing specific elements of art.

 

Middle School

In Middle School Art, students develop their own artistic concepts and are guided along a process of artistic project management as they work towards completing a series of artworks inspired by a common theme.

In Ceramics, Middle Schoolers brought their imagination to life through hand-built clay pieces. Coil pots, always a favorite of her Seventh and Eighth Graders, take new forms as students translate their vision through clay and glazes.

Middle School Photography students focused on developing skills and knowledge of photography – specifically, how to manipulate the manual settings on a D-SLR camera and how to implement creative approaches to taking and post-producing photographs.