Student Projects & Adaptations:

Creative and Performing Arts High School - CAPA

Mara Cregan, Literary Arts
Tresa Varner, Printmaking/Visual Arts

Summary:

Tenth grade Visual Arts and Literary Arts students from Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) collaborated on a Youth Philosophy project. Students read and discussed Warhol’s publication The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to B and Back Again) and other philosophical essays, as a touchstone. Students participated in research and dialogue sessions in which they speculated on the nature of existence and themes such as time, love, and beauty. In small groups they developed strategies for compiling a youth philosophy in their school. Examples of their collecting strategies included: written surveys in which the students asked peers to discuss their philosophical ideas about time and beauty; collecting peers’ sketchbook drawings and doodles inspired by popular comic book and video game imagery related to the theme of “death”; and amassing representations of youth culture in the media. Final projects paired imagery created by the Visual Arts students with poems and philosophical musings written by students of the Literary Arts.

Adaptations:

Motivation lesson prior to Youth Philosophy project:
Students created two collections, 1) red objects and 2) round objects. These collections were photographed and used to teach the photographic silkscreen processes.

Collecting Red Objects: Image Gallery

Before & After: Hand drawn film positives combined with two-channel photographic positives (print of gum wrapper)