On April 29, 2023, Convent & Stuart Hall families arrived on campus for third annual Heart of Art festival, a daylong art-making event featuring our talented teaching faculty and Artist-in-Residence Caleb Duarte, each of whom designed a temporary art installation with the support of student apprentices. Learn more about the 2023 festival below or view the 2023 Heart of the Art festival photo album.
2023 Heart of Art Artists and Projects
Caleb Duarte is best known for creating temporary installations using construction-type frameworks such as beds of dirt, cement and objects representing basic shelter. His installations often become performance sites for community collaborations consisting of the figure temporarily placed within sculptural settings. Mr. Duarte’s work is produced through engaging with active social and cultural resistance sites.
Heart of Art Project: Held in Hearts & Hands
Location: Broadway Campus/Cortile
How do we hold our bodies in both time and experience? Using plaster to freeze gestures, participants will create casts of high school students. With the intention of recognizing how our bodies hold experience while perpetually shifting in time and space, students will create masks that will be part of an afternoon performance.
Julie Martin is an artist, jeweler and art educator. Her passion for art exists within using creativity as a means for healing and communication, and she finds that through art, she can achieve a deeper understanding of herself and the world around her. As a teaching artist, she strives to encourage and guide students to access this deeper understanding within themselves. Julie currently teaches Art Foundations I, Art Foundations II and IB Visual Art.
Heart of Art Project: The Art of Noticing [note]
Location: Broadway Campus/Syufy Court
This project combines close observations of elements in nature and printmaking. Participants will make prints to take home and contribute to a collective collage displayed on campus.
Shenita Allen is an Oakland-based artist and educator currently teaching fifth and sixth grade visual art. She is passionate about using art as a means of self-exploration and self-expression. As an educator, Shenita encourages her students to find their unique voice in creating works of art that respond to their personal experiences with the world around them.
Heart of Art Project: Painting With Textures
Location: Broadway Campus/Syufy Court
There are many textures that we observe and interact with in our everyday lives. From brick walls and clouds in the sky to the veins on a leaf, we can engage with our world based on the look and feel of the surfaces and objects we come into contact with. Participants will learn to create everyday textures using watercolor, various mediums and common household items. The final product will be a collage of textures that tell a story of the world around us.
Alex Bargas is a Bay Area artist currently teaching visual art to students in Grades K–3. Art has been a significant part of Alex’s life for as long as he can remember. One of the most impactful lessons art has taught him is that “mistakes” are imperative to the process of creating anything and everything in life. Alex hopes to pass on that knowledge and his absolute love for the arts to his students.
Heart of Art Project: Framing Moments
Throughout time and across culture,s a physical frame has been used to hold images and memories of loved ones and cherished moments. Alex invites students and their famililies in a paper frame-making process used across Latin America and often in the United States. Participants will learn the art of folding and connecting to create a personal picture frame using simple paper or recycled materials such as wrappers and scraps of paper.
Ryan Magee is a nonbinary digital artist and educator living in San Francisco. Their work encompasses 2D and 3D visualizations, videography, interactive fiction and music. Ryan encourages students to find thoughtful and meaningful ways to incorporate technology into their work.
Heart of Art Project: Make a Face
Location: Broadway Campus/Flood Mansion
This project is an interactive installation that asks visitors to create a pixelated self-portrait. Using digital tools and a limited palette, the designs will be visually similar yet stylistically unique. The portraits will be showcased in an animated art piece on TV screens throughout campus.
Liam Carey is an educator and artist who enjoys exploring the countless connections between art, science and technology. He values art as an opportunity to connect to the world as both a way to push through challenges and celebrate the beauty around us. He strives to help students understand the application of what they are learning in their lives as they engage in meaningful, experiential learning. Liam appreciates finding ways to help students express their unique perspectives as they discover what they can create in various mediums.
Heart of Art Project: Starry Night
Location: Broadway Campus/Syufy Court
Students will create interpretations of a night sky using stencils created by ninth and tenth grade digital design classes. Using spray paint, each participant will create a simple gradient consisting of three to four- bright colors. They will then use the stencils to spray over their gradient with a dark color leaving their stars in the colors of the gradient they chose.
Before the event, digital design students will write code using TinkerCad Codeblocks to create the stencils based on individual geometric shapes. They will then cut these on the laser cutter in various sizes for stencil use.
A Look Back at the Heart of Art Festival
Roll over images below to view the full photo gallery.
Heart of Art Festival 2022
Heart of Art Festival 2021
