Visual Arts Program

VISUAL ARTS  PHILOSOPHY STATEMENT

InterAmerican Academy (IAA) is the vehicle for our learners to observe the world through the looking glass of joy and understanding engaged in visual arts through media, techniques and processes, as their inner world of feeling, imagination, reason and critical-thinking are uniquely developed. Through our program learners feel and discover that challenges are the path to growth as they learn to take pleasure in the production of artwork through increasing mastery of standards and they learn to critically appreciate the contributions of art in the world.

The Visual Arts program at IAA adheres to the National Core Art Standards. These standards are also developed with the full knowledge of current trends in the field of public education, including— notably—the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).  With a focus on processes, enduring understandings, essential questions, and assessments, these arts standards represent a new and innovative approach to arts education that will serve students, teachers, parents, and decision-makers now and in the future.  

InterAmerican Academy offers an AP 2-D Art and Design Art program. AP 2-D Art and Design is an introductory college-level two-dimensional design course. Students refine and apply 2-D skills to ideas they develop throughout the course.

AP Art and Design Course & Exam Description

Philosophical Foundation & Lifelong Goals 

The Arts as Communication In today’s multimedia society, the arts are the media, and therefore provide powerful and essential means of communication. The arts provide unique symbol systems and metaphors that convey and inform life experience (i.e., the arts are ways of knowing). Artistically literate citizens use a variety of artistic media, symbols, and metaphors to independently create and perform work that expresses and communicates their own ideas, and are able to respond by analyzing and interpreting the artistic communications of others. 

The Arts as Creative Personal Realization 

Participation in each of the arts as creators, performers, and audience members enables individuals to discover and develop their own creative capacity, thereby providing a source of lifelong satisfaction. Artistically literate citizens find at least one arts discipline in which they develop sufficient competence to continue active involvement in creating, performing, and responding to art as an adult. 

The Arts as Culture, History, and Connectors

Throughout history the arts have provided essential means for individuals and communities to express their ideas, experiences, feelings, and deepest beliefs. Each discipline shares common goals, but approaches them through distinct media and techniques. Understanding artwork provides insights into individuals’ own and others’ cultures and societies, while also providing opportunities to access, express, and integrate meaning across a variety of content areas. Artistically literate citizens know and understand artwork from varied historical periods and cultures, and actively seek and appreciate diverse forms and genres of artwork of enduring quality/significance. They also seek to understand relationships among the arts, and cultivate habits of searching for and identifying patterns and relationships between the arts and other knowledge.

Arts as Means to Well-being

Participation in the arts as creators, performers, and audience members enhances mental, physical, and emotional well-being. Artistically literate citizens find joy, inspiration, peace, intellectual stimulation, meaning, and other life-enhancing qualities through participation in all of the arts. The Arts as Community Engagement The arts provide means for individuals to collaborate and connect with others in an enjoyable, inclusive environment as they create, prepare, and share artwork that brings communities together. Artistically literate citizens seek artistic experience and support the arts in their local, state, national, and global communities.

Arts Success and Achievement through Creative Practices

“Success and achievement in the arts demands engagement in the four fundamental creative practices of imagination, investigation, construction, and reflection in multiple contexts. These meta-cognitive activities nurture the effective work habits of curiosity, creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving, communication, and collaboration, each of which transfers to the many diverse aspects of learning and life in the 21st century.”