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Peer Review of Art Welcomes Area Schools to Hazelwood Central High
It’s often said that art is an imitation of life. For student artists at Hazelwood Central High School, their lives are providing the inspiration and creativity behind drawings, self-portraits and sculptures.
Hazelwood Central is collaborating with students from Cardinal Ritter College Prep High School and Central Visual Performing Arts High School in a project titled “Revealing What Places Tell Us.” As part of the project, the students are taking turns critiquing each other’s work as the creation process reaches the halfway point. Each school will visit another campus for peer-review sessions. All of the students will have art work displayed at Gallery 210 at the University of Missouri-St. Louis in May.
Tracy Jay, visual arts teacher at Hazelwood Central, said getting feedback from peers is different than from an adult.
“I find peer critique incredibly helpful for student understanding. Students naturally hold their peers’ opinions in high regard, and many times, they are able to communicate information in a way that is easy to understand,” said Jay.
Students from HCHS set up their work in the school’s Professional Learning Center, the former site of the library. Chairs were placed at each table for guests to sit, ask questions and write down their thoughts for the artist to take into consideration. The guests rotated around the room, spending time at each artist’s station.
Byron Rogers, a HCHS senior, is creating a fence of flowers from recycled materials such as soda bottles and cans and other found items.
“It’s a representation of my senior year. I went through a lot of junk this year, and the flower fence shows growth into beauty,” explained Rogers.
Cameron Cooper, a senior, is developing a piece that represents his first visit to Chicago. Made from plexi glass, water color and oil pastels, the layered work will reveal his appreciation and enjoyment of the experience. He traveled to Chicago to visit a college.
“The city caught my attention. It’s different from St. Louis,” said Cooper, referring to the density of people on the street, the traffic, the buildings and architecture.
Next to him, Stephanie Hegger, a senior, explained a sculpture of the head of a little girl with a peapod coming out of her nose. The peas are a distinct childhood memory. The head of the sculpture is removable, and inside is an array of peas.
Hegger thinks the student critique process helps artists “come up with better ideas.”
“It makes your work a little more successful, and what you want it to be,” said Hegger.
“Critiques help you develop yourself. Critiques are always good because they help you learn,” she added.
Jay said student feedback has been positive. “Our students have taken this critique process very seriously and are using it to improve their art work. They appreciate the honest, constructive criticism, but were frustrated with comments that seemed vague,” she said.
“We were told that our process was very organized and allowed all of the students to participate in verbal and written critiques.”
This is the second year that HCHS has worked with CVPA; it’s the first year to collaborate with Cardinal Ritter.
The process helps student creativity in that “it’s a positive experience for students to get input from their peers from outside of the District. I think it’s important for our students to see how other high schools approach creation and the critique process,” said Jay.
HCHS will visit Cardinal Ritter on March 22.They visited CVPA earlier this month. The gallery display at UMSL will feature 14 students from Hazelwood Central High School. (story courtesy of the Hazelwood District Communications Dept.)
