It's hard to believe our school year has officially ended.  It feels like just yesterday that we were welcoming our 2020-2021 students to their virtual classrooms.  We are so proud of the work our students created, and the bonds formed in each course during this unprecedented year.  May and June flew by quickly.  We celebrated our annual Spring Showcase, hosted digitally by The Design Museum of Chicago.  The first AAP Class Olympics was held and fun was had by all, congratulations to Modern Band for bringing home the gold!  Seniors were honored in our first Senior Recognition Day where we highlighted all the amazing work these students completed in their time at AAP, some of which have been with AAP for multiple years.

As we wrap this year up, and look forward to the 2021-2022 School Year, let's look back on what the end of the year looked like in each of our AAP classrooms!

It's hard to believe the year is over!  May and June feel like they went by in a blur!  Our students continued to work hard on numerous projects.  Our first-year students continued working in the Aseprite Pixel Art Program.  Utilizing the walk and run cycles they created, students learned even more about pixel art in their retro side-scroller unit.  Side-scroller video games were incredibly popular in the 8 and 16 bit gaming eras, and their styles are still utilized by the gaming and animation industry today.  First-year students created long, horizontal backgrounds that mimicked a single lvl in a side-scroller game.  Then they inserted the walk and run cycles they created for their Heroes and Villains into the Lvl and animated these characters through the lvl.  They also learned how to animate jumps and attacks during this project.  The result is a love letter to this retro gaming style. 

Our Second-Year students worked more in Rotoscoping, and created self sprite animations.  Second-year students also completed a flipbook collaboration with DePaul University's animation department which will be featured as a commercial on Lumpen TV!  All students took some time to relax towards the end of the year with some "short film days."  On these days we watched numerous animated shorts and discussed each as a class.  The class also took on one final verbal character design prompt, harkening back to the beginning of the year to see how far their character design skills came.  We will miss all our graduating seniors so much, and wish them all the best as they move on to some amazing colleges like Columbia College Chicago, UIC, DePaul University, SVA NYC, and more!

There is an old artist story, one which one that has been borrowed and adapted over time that everyone needs to know. It goes like this.... Imagine a swan that gracefully moves across a lake. A picture of elegance in motion. What is hidden by the eye is the activity behind the scenes. Beneath the water's surface, you don't see the hard work being done by the swan's webbed feet, propelling the graceful motion that we see and admire.

It's also said that it takes 10 years to become an overnight success. A year of honing your craft during a world pandemic and pushing the boundaries further and further. Striving for excellence is what our dance students accomplished. Our artists showed up daily with vision, guts and gravitas. They stayed connected to other people's lives and cared about making them better. The inspiration created through this community, will embolden us to be able to face what comes
our way and achieve things that we can't yet imagine.

As we come to the end of this strange year, our class has reflected on the work that they've created in the program, the growth in their skills and the confidence that they've gained.  To celebrate the end of the year, students each curated a page on our class's website- to showcase their portfolio work, personal work, favorite sketchbook pages, and foundational pieces made earlier in the year.  To see the amazing work that our class created this year, click here!

​It’s been a wild ride this year, but we are so proud of all of our students!  The end of May and June came with our AP Music Theory Exam!  While we won’t know the results until later in the summer, I’m incredibly proud of everyone and all we’ve learned this year.  

We really put our knowledge to good use in the last few weeks.  Composer and percussionist, Ivan Trevino, wrote a book during the pandemic called “Co-Write”, which features 15 short musical ideas.  The goal of the book is to give musicians initial ideas and inspiration to build upon and create compositions of their own.  All of our students demonstrated mastery of the skills we’ve learned throughout the entire year to create some really creative, thoughtful, unique, and exciting compositions!  Once they are all finished, we would love to share them with you!  Keep a look out for those song on our Music Theory page.

Congratulations students on a wonderful school year, and I hope our musical journeys cross again real soon!

In our final quarter we spent some time learning about all of the different aspects of theatre making and looked at the role of a Scenic Designer, Costume Designer, and Lighting Designer. We watched a special made by the American Theatre Wing and also got to design an aspect of our new plays that we wrote in our Playwriting Unit. We then had a Comedy/Improv Unit where we learned the rules of improv and how to build stretch scenes with dialogue. We found out that we have some great comedians in our ensemble! We then watched some stand up routines by the best of the best and started working on our own stand up routines based on special events or moments in our life. We also got to watch a few plays that were available online from the National Theatre and we loved Amadeus!

​We screened the students’ “Talk the Talk” projects and students researched Genres in preparation for their next project.  In class, we discussed distilling a film plot down to a few lines for Log-Lines, how to write a Treatment that lead to development of a screenplay.

By mid month we were screening Genre films while students worked on their personal Diary films.  We delved deeper into pre production methods and shooting skills and students prepared for their Final Exam.  For their final exam, students reviewed topics such as: Camera Operation, Shot Sizes, Camera Movements, Sound Design, Screenplay writing, Pre-Production, Lighting, Editing and Set Roles and Responsibilities.

It was a whirlwind of a Month and it swept us up into the world of film and into June….

April was a busy month at Advanced Arts, which it always is, as April is a big prep month for our annual Spring Showcase!  Our students continued to excel.  Numerous students got work accepted into ACVA, and three of our AAP Students got their work accepted into Art On The Mart's new Spring Exhibition featuring CPS High School Seniors.  Congratulations to Victoria Mak of Drawing & Painting, Sofia Marie Dimas of Modern Band, and Henry De Luca of Animation & Sequential Arts for getting work accepted into this highly exclusive show.  Let's see what our classes were up to this past month in full Showcase Preparation Mode!

Our First-Year students continued to work in the Program Aseprite within the Pixel Art Genre.  They learned how to break down walk and run cycles to their base forms.  Students had to also analyze how to apply the 12 Principles of Animation to their work create some cycles of their own.  Before creating their walk and run cycles, students had to translate their Hero & Villain Characters into the Pixel Art Genre.  It was an excellent exercise in simplification and minimization.  Before making their characters walk and run, students created their own 'maps' laying out what movements will happen in which frame of the cycle.  Walk and Run cycles were created for each Hero & Villain, and will be utilized in a future project.  Second-Year students worked on Rotoscoping Poetry within the program Gimp.  Each student picked out a poem that really spoke to them, filmed themselves or a family member reading it, and then animated on top of the footage.  We quickly realized we were pushing this program a bit beyond it's capabilities.  Students worked through frustrating program crashes and glitches to create some very thoughtful animations.  We are excited to share their work with the world in Spring Showcase!

We have successfully completed our artist sketchbook project with wonderful results. With our encouragement we can continue to use the sketchbook as a tool to develop future projects and continue to spark their creativity. Onward and upward. Looking at the work of artists like Joseph Cornell we have begun the initial stages of creating a shadow box. It was with the students' input we have decided the subject will be culture. We have put forth a number of questions for each student to ponder and answer as to what culture they or their family identify with. As they research this question to begin to develop, find, identify the cultural symbols that are significant to them. These symbols will become the basis for the development of this project.

7 Questions
7 Artists
1 Very Unique Year

April has flown by!  The students have been hard at work finishing up pieces for the upcoming showcase.  Here's a few teasers of what is being featured, but be sure to join us on Thursday, May 27th to see the work in its entirety!

Her work will be featured starting on May20th, at 9:00pm, and going until June 26th.  If you see this image projected on the Merchandise Mart downtown, think of Victoria and all of the outstanding work that our talented students create here at Advanced Arts!

April provided some fun challenges, having our rock stars work on solo projects for the opportunity to have student work featured at the Art on the Mart Event in May. Student work submitted made it very difficult to select, which is an excellent problem to have. Thanks to help from an administrative panel, a decision was made (no spoilers). Students finished post-production work on their solo projects as they transitioned to two Large Ensemble projects that we hope will reflect the hope and positivity of times yet to come. We’re also excited to hear about our seniors’ decisions regarding their college choices (again, no spoilers).

...but seriously, the AP Music Theory exam is looming, and we’ve really hunkered down to prepare for the exam.  We’ve been practicing our Free Response Questions, which include Melodic Dictation, Harmonic Dictation, Sight Singing, Part Writing, and Harmonizing a Melody.  We’ve also been practicing our multiple choice test taking strategies!  Here’s to hoping for all 5’s (out of 5) on the AP exam!

This month we focused on the all important skills of Dialogue and Pre Production in film.  Students worked through their process from idea to treatment to storyboarding to filming; fully cementing the necessity of a clear vision and communication of plan.  In preparation for our “Talk the Talk” dialogue project, we screened Me, Earl & the Dying Girl and discussed how to make dialogue interesting AND cinematic.  We also began to explore the concept of Genre in film and what it means to be in a specific genre or sub-genre.  Action to Sci-Fi, Romance to Docu-Drama.  What genre do you gravitate towards?

Students were also treated to two incredible guest speakers.  Wendy Greene is a producer of reality television shows- she talked to us about how to break into the business, what it’s like to work on location, and the different types of jobs different producers do.

M.J. Rizk is a cameraperson for documentary and reality television.  She explained how camerapeople compose shots, work with directors, and sometimes serve as their own Directors of Photography.

This past month our ensemble has taken a deep dive in all of the elements it takes to produce a play, picking up with the new plays that our class wrote last month. We were able to hear each play come to life with our ensemble acting in each other's plays and had incredible conversations about how their plays can change the hearts and minds of their audience members. We also do a quick poetry unit called My Dream America where each student wrote a poem that helped visualize what our society could look like in the future. It is easy to get weighed down with all that's happening across the globe so we wanted to balance that weight with the freedom of bringing new ideas of how to work together to light. We watched an amazing performance of Madea produced by the National Theatre Company and I, Cinna by Tim Crouch that was produced at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre and directed by our very own, Mr. Phillips! We are looking forward to watching August Wilson’s Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and more plays from the National Theatre Collection as we learn more about Costume Design, Scenic Design, Lighting Design, and Sound Design. Check out this stills from recordings of the My Dream America poem series.

With the end of March we saw Chicago thaw out a bit as Winter Part II ended and Spring Part II began.  March also signaled the end of the quarter for our students, it is hard to believe we only have one quarter left in the school year.  Time flies when you're having fun!  Everyone is back, and ready to go after Spring Break.  Our school is ready to go into full Spring Showcase Preparation Mode.  Let's check in with our classes to see what everyone accomplished last month!

Our students dove deep into Pixel Art this month, using one of our favorite programs, Aseprite.  Aseprite is an industry standard Pixel Art program that is used in Illustration, Animation, and Gaming Design.  Students learned to break objects down to their most basic, recognizable forms through minimization exercises and prompts.  We completed our annual "Cozy Comfy Place" project once students were better used to the program.  Students were asked to design their ideal Cozy, Comfy Place in Aseprite.  The results had us all wishing we could visit these places in real life!  We also use Pixel Art and Aseprite as a jumping off point for first year students for Animation!  Students worked hard to create their first animations in Aseprite, a simple but essential Idle Sprite Animation!

So far so good. Our students continue to be productive with our sketchbook project. This week we are adding paper making to our repertoire. Who knew dryer lint could be upcycled or recycled into art. We have been looking at many fantastic examples of homemade paper. The inspiration is endless. Everyone is eager to try their hand at working with clay. We are also beginning to explore ideas for that as well.

March went by really quickly for us in culinary! We had a few Chopped Challenges that made us think outside the box when it came to cooking rice and scrambled eggs! What we mainly worked on, however, is our final showcase projects. This year, we are making exhibits based on recipes that mean something to us. The chefs have been working hard. They have planned the menu, penned the grocery lists, tested and created a recipe page and video. For the next few months, we will be learning each other's recipes.Something we are very excited to do!

In Dance class our students worked hard on some Group Choreography!

This last month, students have been working hard and creating the very first pieces for their sustained investigations.  It's been amazing watching this process begin, and we look forward to seeing more and even better art get made.  Here are some previews of the variety of work getting made, but stay tuned for more!

The Deep Dish Festival was such a fruitful experience! Our students received really positive feedback and they got to attend informative masterclasses and a very fun concert. We hope to showcase some of the Deep Dish student performances in our Spring Showcase, so be on the lookout for that. Looking forward we have lots of new projects in the works!Our students are getting ready to submit their compositions for the amazing Art On The Mart! Their projects consist of recording a solo piece that will accompany a projection of visual arts made by other CPS students. The “stage” where our students’ original music will be played is the Merchandise Mart in downtown Chicago. What an amazing opportunity!

This month we screened our long take films and watched some famous long takes in the works of Alfonso Cuaron, Alfred Hitchcock & Martin Scorsese.  We continued our film journey; working on the fundamentals of lighting.  We looked at exposure, practical lighting & 2-point lighting.  We also screened several film clips analyzing lighting to better understand its effects in a scene.  We practiced some lighting techniques in class and independently and watched “Poltergeist” for good measure.  As we approached the spring break respite, we began discussing pre-production planning with blocking, storyboards and screenwriting.  We screened “Miss Juneteenth” and had our first of several industry professionals come speak to our class; Director and teacher, Mr. Vincent Singleton.  We also learned that one of our very own students, Ms. Rachel Bowman, is selected to have her work shown at the Chicago International Film Festival this year as part of the CineYouth selection.  We could not be more proud and excited.  April is going to be an exciting month!

Photos below are of of Director Vincent Singleton; Vincent Singleton explaining overhead diagrams for planning a film shoot.

March FLEW by for the Theatre class. We tried our hand at play-writing working with a Pegasus Theatre Chicago’s teaching artist Jose Nateras, a professional playwright, college professor, screenwriter, and actor who lives in Los Angeles. Using the six pillars of play-writing -- character, dialogue, conflict, setting, plot, and theme -- Jose walked the students through each pillar using well-known stories from Disney to Horror films as well as students’ work. The assignment was to write a ten-minute play, about ten pages. Some of our students wrote scripts that are over thirty pages.

If this weren’t enough, we also had three students make it to the City-wide finals of the National August Wilson Monologue Competition. There were sixteen students from across the city and region in the finals and we represented almost 20% of them. Congratulations to Donald Pieters (repping Kenwood where he did the bulk of his coaching), Laylah Freeman, and Patrianna Scales!! Great job! 
Finally, we celebrated our quality work with a virtual field trip to see Christina Anderson’s How to Catch Creation at Goodman Theatre. We needed that spring break rest!

February went by quicker than we expected at Advanced Arts.  A month filled with snow and freezing temperatures meant our young artists and instructors were able to stay cozy indoors and concentrate on their craft.  Let's check in with our classes to see what everyone accomplished last month!

The class has a great time working with Ms. Emily and the Animation Students on the collaborative Zines unit. The diversion from our usual routine has made the students more open and aware of what goes on in other classes and students enjoyed interaction with students from other classes in critiques. We are still putting the finishing touches on the Zine, “Tales from the Times of Covid” by recording a live reading. We are also in the process of dove-tailing the project with our second of the semester, “The Artists Sketchbook”. Using a sketchbook each student will collect ideas, drawings, writings and collage, conventional and unconventional, into their sketchbook to make a unique record of this time and experience in their lives.

This month we worked hard on our Zine unit collaboration with Creative Arts & Ceramics, Animation and Photography. Students enjoyed working with other AAP classes and teens. While drawing is not our first skill, you wouldn’t know it. We have such a talented group of kiddos!

As our month winded down, we started back to business as usual---exploring flavor profiles, tastes and we are warming up with a few cooking challenges. We also had a guest from Lettuce Entertain You, Monique Hunt, who was a breath of fresh air!

Our prep for Showcase begins this month as we start our personal recipe projects. We cannot wait until Spring!

Education leader Sir Ken Robinson, one of the most popular TED speakers of all time, asked the question, “Do schools kill creativity?”. His speech has been referenced by students and teachers alike.  This month, AAP Dance Department is celebrating CPS and their understandings of the importance of arts in education throughout our communities both nationally and globally.  The department is putting together a video entitled “Imagine if…”

Examples include:
Imagine if creativity was as important as literacy in schools.
Imagine if we recognized that intelligence is multifaceted.
Imagine if we were brave enough to take risks and make mistakes in our learning.

The dance department will be part of this global conversation by continuing to celebrate Sir Ken Robinson’s legacy, while inspiring others to realize the value of arts.

As the second semester begins, and the tone of the class shifts from foundational work to individual studies, we have the class recreate and redefine an older piece that they created in the past, when they were less practiced at their craft.  These "reframed" pieces can really help show an artist just how far they've come in just a few months.

From there, we have each student start to plan for their sustained investigative work.  One advantage that we've found in the time of remote learning, is that a Pintrest wall can serve as a mood board/ or aesthetic collection, which can reflect an interest in a particular style and subject for each individual artist.  From there, we instructors show similar work, talk about techniques illustrated in those collections, and most fun of all, fleshing out ideas with each artist.  Stay tuned for what comes next!

Our Rock Stars wrapped up small ensemble projects with some amazing original projects and a blazing cover of a saucy Spanish rock tune. They used newly acquired skills in digital studio music to record their independent parts and engineered them together in a Digital Audio Workstation.

Their work will have been adjudicated by Industry Professionals at Columbia College’s Annual Deep Dish Music Festival, where they will participate in workshops ranging from audition practices to improvisation to a performance by Chicago’s very own award winning guitarist, Isaiah Sharkey. We’re well into our songwriting journey as we prepare for upcoming composition exhibitions, which lead to our ultimate gig: the Spring Showcase.

With several months of knowledge behind us, music theory students have been able to take the skills they have learned and start to create longer compositions on their own.  We used our knowledge of musical form and musical modes to create modal works of length.  Students presented their own songs for the class to analyze and discuss.  

As February is Black History Month, we also spent time
studying Jazz History, the 12 bar blues, and how African-Americans created an entirely new style of music that changed the course of music history.  We enjoyed listening to early jazz music and all of the music that came after.

We are looking forward to perfecting our 4 Part Chorale composition skills and taking our first full practice exam in March!  Onwards and upwards!

The students have been exploring the foundations of narrative filmmaking.  We reviewed  shot sizes and camera movements and discussed breaking down a scene for point of view, and we explored how to make a scene visually appealing using motivated camera movements. Students watched and analized Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train” and “Rope” to inform their own work on blocking, staging and camera movement.  The projects we have been working on have been really exciting and have included creating "animatics" (animated short films of their storyboards).   Students are currently completing a "long take" film that requires them to block camera and actors in a single long shot for an entire one page script.

A lot has happened since our last blog update in October.  We celebrated Thanksgiving, the Holiday Season, the New Year, and launched our Winter Showcase in partnership with The Design Museum of Chicago.  We also saw many of our Advanced Arts Seniors exhibit work in the All City Senior Portfolio Show, and even had two of our own Advanced Arts Students; Abby Moon-Sarudi of Animation & Sequential Arts, and Victoria Mac of Drawing & Painting help introduce the exhibition on Youtube Live.  After the Holiday Break, everyone hit the ground running to finish the second quarter of the year off on a high note!  Let's check in, and see what has happened in our classrooms this past month...

January has been a busy month for Animation & Sequential Arts.  First Year students have been working on world creation concept art, focusing specifically on background art.  First year students have been learning to create worlds that feel real, fleshed out, and lived in; while also learning illustrative techniques to utilize in Adobe Photoshop.  Second Year students have been working the entire month on a long term, large scale project to independently publish a large-scale Zine.  Each Zine will be at least 20 pages upon completion, and students were asked to focus on multi-frame page formatting.  The first year students are now finishing up their background art creations, and will be joining the second year students in learning about Zines and Mini-Comics.  Second year students will act as class leaders to help instructors teach the very physical concept of Zines remotely. 

The students in Advanced Culinary Arts continue to amaze us with not just their culinary skills, but with their creative talents, their care and integrity towards how they treat each other, their willingness to share, their ability to go with the flow, and their intense wisdom, for being so young.
This quarter, we eased back in and did a mix of creative culinary activities to spark new understandings of old culinary terminology and technique, as well as the introduction of a little more. We also explored topics in social justice in the food world and spent a few weeks really having great conversations about how the farming and food industry can do better, and what we can do.
We’ve also had a few “Chopped Challenges”, including a Ramen Challenge, a Historical Menu Challenge that a few teens brought to life, and an Eggcelent challenge using...you guessed it...eggs.
This class is an absolute pleasure to teach!

What began as a sprint has become a marathon of on-line teaching, blended with authentic learning and creativity from around the globe.  AAP Dance students are learning new technologies and connecting them with authentic learning through their recent creation: “Exquisite Corpse.” This was originally a pick-up game or practice where one person picks up where the previous one left off.
 
Inspired by filmmaker and dance professor Mitchell Rose, AAP’s dance students created their own version of, “Exquisite Corps”, where the dancers became contemporary choreographers, passing the dance along to each other.  Each dancer began their movement with an action or position that ended the previous dance.  The dances are just a few seconds in length and happen in different locations.  The editing and camera create a seamless connection between each choreographer.  The AAP Dance students, now choreographers, join a global group of revered choreographers who have been part of their own,“Exquisite Corps.”
 
Check out the final results here:

After a well needed Holiday Break, the Modern Band students returned and are ready to COMPOSE! Our class is going to participate in the Deep Dish Festival curated by the Columbia College of Chicago in which their works will be showcased and workshopped by professionals. Said festival is curated by the  Grammy-winning guitarist Isaiah Sharkey (John Mayer, D’Angelo, and Paul Simon). Our Modern Band students received professional recording equipment to be able to pursue their compositional projects for this Festival thanks to our AAP administrators Brian and Melisa! Their studio bundles included a microphone and an interface that you can see in the pictures below. We can’t wait to share with everyone all the creativity of our students! They are all hard at work writing lyrics, learning chords, coming up with beats, and practicing the parts to their very original songs. This unit segues into future composition and music tech units that will guide the students to our Spring Showcase and Original Music Exposition.

Students came back from our winter break and hit the ground running, creating some wonderful, sophisticated 4 part chorales.  We’ve dug deep into the rules of creating a captivating and interesting melody as well as the intricacies of harmonizing using alto, tenor, and bass.  We’ve also been spending more time training our ears!  Part of music theory is also aural skills, the ability to hear music and immediately dictate and analyze.  It’s a skill musicians practice their entire careers, but we are becoming more and more advanced by the day.  Through sight singing, melodic dictation, and harmonic dictation, advanced analysis of music is becoming easier each class. 

WE’RE BACK... And we are so happy to be back in class, everyone was super ready and excited to get back into talking about photography. We started the first week back into critique based on the Homage assignment we gave out during break. And the students did an excellent job of interpreting homage in their own way many of the students paid homage to family/important people in their life or a subject that means the world to them.It was beautiful hearing how this homage assignment meant to them and how personal it was. They each did and try so many things, like still life photography and a combination of portrait photography to illustrate an homage.

We returned from our much needed break to continue and complete the experimental film where we explored different themes developed from emotions.  Students shared footage they all shot individually into a crowdsourced project.  We developed editing skills including motion graphics effects and titles.  Students continue to work on expressionistic, layered soundscapes.  During our screenings, students worked on their critiquing skills.  We started our screenplay project where students are taking ideas from a log line through a treatment to a finished short narrative screenplay.  We are focusing on developing character using locations and finding dramatic moments.