1. Art Teacher Alisha Marchewka shared her door for Black History Month, done by her students. She took a copy of a Basquiat painting and cut it into squares. Different students recreated different squares of the painting and another group of students worked together to paint Basquiat himself. She then glued all the pieces together with a quote to complete her door.

2. Art Teacher Allison Sexson shared these portraits her students made for celebrating Black History Month. After posterizing some of the images in Photoshop, she projected the photos on the board for students to trace and paint.

3. Art Teacher Page Gleeson had her 8th graders research famous artists from the last 100 years. Then she taught them how to create value with micrography. Here’s some of her favorite micrography portraits of her students created.

4. For Black History Month some of High School Art Teacher Kari Howell’s students created portraits of influential figures, in both the past and present, who made an impact on establishing more equality, human rights and particularly the right for all people to vote. We presented them for our Black History Month celebration. Every Year’s celebration has a formally selected theme. Theme ideas can be found here.

We had a formal presentation that various groups and classes participated in presenting. It took place in the school theater in the evening open to the entire community. We had the high school dance team perform, ROTC did a presentation of notable African American who served, the community college dance team performed, readers read out African American poetry, the culinary arts class prepared and served authentic African American dishes, and my students’ artwork was set up as a gallery exhibit for people to view. All of the teachers involved presented a brief introduction statement of what our students did. I had all of my students do a mini research write-up based on the person they chose and that was shown alongside the artwork.

Art Teacher, Kari Howell

5. Art Teacher Joy Danila shared this lesson done with ceremic students and based on the history of African face pots. Check out the lesson, HERE.