Orange High School Gets Creative

Orange High students create their works of art after a lesson in abstract poetry.

On Monday, Chapman’s Escalette Permanent Collection of Art was very proud to participate in the Chapman University-Orange High School Literacies Partnership!

Students from OHS have gathered every week after school at Chapman to participate in the 2015 Young Writers’ Workshop, in collaboration with the John Fowles Center for Creative Writing.  For this week’s session, the students were given a tour of the Escalette Collection’s contemporary art, specifically abstract expressionist-focused pieces in Beckman Hall. During the tour, students explored works such as Michael Reafsnyder’s Floating (2006) and Hassel Smith’s At Miss Webb’s (1963), and learned about the physical and compositional aspects of abstract expressionism.

After the tour, the students learned about abstract writing styles, including those of authors Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf, that share similarities with visual abstraction. They then used these writings and the tour as inspiration for their own creative writing piece. To finish off the workshop, the students synthesized everything they’d learned and seen to create their own abstract expressionist pieces.  They were absolutely fearless and color-savvy creators!

On April 27th, the group will gather at Chapman for a community meeting to share their work from the Young Writers’ Workshop, as well as their original artwork from this session.

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