From the very first day, Hyla’s three-year art program focuses on seeing every student as an artist, and helping them to see themselves that way.

The first year is a phase of exploration, where students are asked to approach art making through experimentation, playfulness, and research. Students will learn about the principles and elements of art, how artists can use these ideas as tools for making and speaking about art, and how artists use these principles and elements to intentionally shape the experience and perception of the viewer. The first year culminates in the Archaeology collaboration with Humanities, where students use the tools they have learned to create “artifacts”, pieces of art that effectively convey information about the cultures that they create in this unit.

In seventh grade, art students build on their sixth grade experiences, using the tools from the previous year to make art that is informed by their personal experience of the world around them. We use questions and inquiry to help us frame the exploration that seventh graders embark on in art.

The year is broken down into four different units. These units focus on the people around us; what we hold dear; who we are as individuals; and how we can use art to understand contemporary art as a byproduct of our culture. Seventh grade art students focus on learning how art can be used to explore the world, individual and community identity, and ultimately to communicate personal meaning.

The third year in art is an in depth study of installation art, driven by a question that the students come up with. Questions have included "what are we made of?" and "what do you see when you look in the mirror?". The unit culminates in the creation of a class exhibition in the Hyla Barn when families and Hyla students are invited to explore the central question and student responses to it. To lead up to this culminating exhibition, we begin the year by breaking down what installation art is, how it differs from other artistic genres, and why artists choose installation art over other means of expression. In an effort to get our eighth graders to see the art room as an empty room (or a blank canvas), we dip our toes into the world of installation art by completing what we call a “mini-installation”. This is an empty shoebox, where students explore the question “Who am I?” through their art using a monochromatic color scheme of their own choice. They decide how the inside is lit, how viewers will see inside, and what materials they will use to communicate something about themselves. This prepares students for the main installation project, where they will determine a question to use as the guiding and unifying theme for their collaborative piece.