Student Art Projects Displayed at the Pine Community Center

For the fourth year in a row, Pine-Richland student art is on display at Pine Community Center. 

Through their In-Depth Program Review (IDPR), the art department developed a goal of connecting with the community to benefit both students and the art department. Because many community members do not have an opportunity to see student art, our art teachers wanted to ensure that the entire community had an opportunity to stop in and see what students are creating. The collaboration with Pine Community Center was developed to help meet this aim to share art with the broader community. 

Students in kindergarten through eighth grade are represented through projects detailed below. All members of the community are encouraged to stop by to see what our students have been working on this school year! 

Richland, Hance and Wexford Elementary

At Richland, Hance and Wexford Elementary Schools, Mrs. Jennifer Jankowski and Mrs. Katie Laslavic are thrilled to share the creative experiences and projects that their students have created so far this school year. Our primary art program is designed to foster a love for the visual arts while encouraging students to express themselves creatively and discover artists, movements, and styles from around the world. All elementary art lessons align with the National Core Art Standards, focusing on Creating, Presenting, Responding, and Connecting.

Students across all grades are learning to use specialized art tools and care for our art studio. Through weekly hands-on activities, they are encouraged to appreciate and respond to the visual arts. Their enthusiasm is evident as they engage with and respond to artworks created by peers, fostering connections and artistic conversations. We hope you enjoy a small sample of their works displayed for our community.

Mrs. Jankowski’s Students: Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month

In collaboration with our library and music teachers, all students participated in activities celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month. They enjoyed exploring literature, music, and art from Latin America, which has broadened their awareness and appreciation of diverse global communities.

Kindergarten artists are thrilled to explore and create art in the studio! They have learned about famous “dot” artists and celebrated International Dot Day by creating large dots using tempera paint sticks. The young artists have been practicing line and color, focusing on their versions of concentric, vertical, and horizontal lines. They are also learning the RAMS Way in art class, emphasizing respectful and safe studio habits.

• Featured Hance artists: Neel Khursale, Warren Mincin and Noah Ryan
• Featured Wexford artists: Bryson Dean, Grisha Machhi and Julia Montalbano

First-grade artists studied Mexico’s Talavera ceramics. The students explored line, color and shape, enjoying the freedom to make creative choices. Hance students chose their own color palettes and created colorful serapes. They freely cut and glued their own lines out of construction paper and created line designs. They carefully drew their own line designs with oil pastels and snipped delicate fringe with greater scissor control. Wexford students painted papers with tempera, experimenting with color mixing. They carefully cut and glued their suns and moons painted with warm or cool colors. They practiced and freely drew their line designs and various emotions into their artworks for additional personality.

• Featured Hance artists: Willow Began and Pennington Osberg
• Featured Wexford artists: Radha Narkhede, Nikolas Papas, Noah Steadman and Whittaker Vietmeier

Second-grade artists delved into the annual migration of monarch butterflies to Mexico. They learning about the butterflies' body parts and gender identification and then created unique butterflies by painting and printing for bilateral symmetry. They developed their own butterfly designs, practicing brush control and blending techniques to enhance their skills. They explored line, color, unity, variety, contrast and balance in their projects.

• Featured Hance artists: Amelia Toth and Luca Washington
• Featured Wexford artists: Connor Campbell and Devon Thompson

Third-grade artists continued their exploration of Latin American art by creating symmetric Mexican blanket paintings. They printed graphic lines using recycled cardboard, practiced brush control and blending techniques for strong vertical lines, and learned to form lark’s head knots for authentic texture. They enjoyed using masking tape and paper punch tools in their compositions. These artists explored line, color, texture, unity, variety, contrast, and balance in addition to developing their own decision-making skills and learning to handle mistakes.

• Featured Hance artists: Gideon Glass and Sophie Wuenstel
• Featured Wexford artists: Lia Baumberger and Soyoon Kim

Mrs. Laslavic’s Students

In collaboration with our school-wide theme, Dreaming BIG, students at Richland and Hance are dreaming BIG. They enjoyed exploring art and understanding what it takes to create bold art that stands out! Many artists start with a dream and let their dreams lead them to success, and we learned how to do the same! 

Our youngest artists in kindergarten have been learning the processes and routines of the art studio while visiting every other week. They’re finishing up their LINE unit, creating colorful Crayon Buddies, and learning how to use scissors and glue responsibly — all while practicing the RAMS Way and discovering what it means to be inspired by art!

• Featured Richland artists: Jordan DeLuca and Charlotte Wissner

First graders celebrated the movement and techniques of Vincent Van Gogh by creating colorful cityscapes with Starry Night–inspired skies filled with line, shape, and texture. Each piece of art is filled with a dream and a special artist soaring through the sky.

• Featured Hance artist: Maddie Scalise
• Featured Richland artists: Cooper Woodward and Everly Matt

Second graders have been busy dreamers! We began the year studying Vincent Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” and learning to layer paint just like professional artists. Through layering, students explored how tints and shades create depth, shadows, and highlights in their work. Our young artists also studied real-life nature to inspire their masterpieces, discovering the difference between realistic art and other artistic styles. They learned that a still life can be created from the simple beauty of everyday objects — even those found in nature!

• Hance artist: Celina Romoff 
• Richland artists: Levi Robbie, Gretta Graham and Alaina Yagall

Our third-grade artists launched into the year with a collaborative mural project inspired by Van Gogh’s signature painting movement and expressive line. Each student designed an origami piece filled with dynamic lines to contribute to our stunning mural outside the art room. Additionally, third-grade students studied the importance of remembrance and created painted poppies to celebrate Veterans Day. 

Currently on display is the newest addition to the third grade’s art portfolio this year, a black and white design inspired by the Japanese Notan technique. Artists created high contrast pieces of art with black and white cutouts forming positive and negative space designs. 

• Featured Hance artist: Eliyah Killipiler
• Featured Richland artists: Maya Oeler and Gavin Michie

Eden Hall Upper Elementary School

Mrs. Tronetti’s fourth-grade students completed fiber emotional designs using line, shape, and color. They demonstrated 1-2 emotions through these specific art elements. Some students approached it with a non-representational design, while others hid images within their line layout. Their final project resulted in a fiber design out of yarn and glue using their original drawing as a guide.

• Featured artists: Avalon Wenskovitch, Edi Ballanca, Emma Mills and Isla Luksik

Fifth-grade students chose an animal to study. They broke it into simple shapes before redrawing those shapes and adjusting the contour line. Each student chose how they would showcase their animal and what materials to use in their 2D design.

• Featured artists: Abigail Arnold, Elisha Cates, Joanna Induri, Lia Burt and Violet Fang

Sixth-grade students experimented with blending and stippling techniques after observing and identifying shadow, midtones, and highlights. They created designs of rounded objects and applied shading concepts using either one or both styles of shading techniques.

• Featured artists: Avery Evans, Derek Pry, Kelsea Krakowiak, Kelsey Cain, Natalie Jurecko and Zoe Splitstone

Pine-Richland Middle School 

Mrs. Angeloff’s 2D Design Studio

Eighth-grade art students launched a creative art project that brings imagination, design skills and the elements of art together.

Over three weeks and many art class periods, students sketched and developed original aliens or fantasy characters for video games or graphic novels. The final project emphasizes thoughtful artistic choices in line, shape, color value and visual textures or patterns. The project concluded with a short assessment where students analyzed and explained those choices.

• Featured artists: Nathan Angelo, Kyle Annal, Sofia Bezilla, Sarah Brashear, Hayley Buchanan, Anjil Cooper, George Miller, Franco Perkusic, Annabel Pettathy, Bayleigh Smith and Hallie Stone