The New Normal: Back to work in the TASIS Art studios

Since TASIS opened at the beginning of September, 2020, for the new school year, students returned to the art studios of the Şahenk Art Center after an absence of 6 months. The situation is a bit changed in our world and at school, but the teachers and students are happy to be back together to learn and make art.

In order to satisfy regulations for safe distancing and health, plexiglas panels have been added to the Architecture studio, the Photo Lab, and the Middle School Art Room. The Middle School Art Room and the Photo Lab have been the most notably altered as desks and tables have been separated to accommodate mandatory distancing of students. Students and teachers regularly disinfect all the working surfaces, including computer keyboards, mouse, desks, and shared tools.

This means that Studio photography is more difficult and students now must use portable equipment to set up where they can. All the art and design studios must work with more limited work space for art making. The days of students spreading out in the process of creating new work has been suspended until such time that we can work together without masks and disinfectant. Students in Mr. Dukes’ High School Art room have been given their art supplies which they must store in individual plastic boxes with their sketchbooks in order to impede sharing or touching by others. Sketchbooks that leave the classroom can’t come back. This is the level of caution we have to take to try to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Despite the relative inconvenience and the challenge these precautions present for classes where students are making things and experimenting with techniques and materials, everyone in the TASIS Visual Arts department would like to ensure that we can continue to meet in person, in the art rooms, where students and teachers and work together.

¡Hasta la vista, baby!

Print Exhibition featuring student artworks from TASIS Visual Arts Academic Travel Granada Print Workshop, 2015 - 2020

 Now on view in the Ferit Şahenk Art Center's Horst Dürrschmitt Gallery is an exhibition of student prints from Solar Plate etchings and gravures made in the print studio of master printer Maureen Booth in Pinos Genil, Spain, near the city of Granada. The show celebrates the diversity of student work and the wonderful opportunity that a week-long, immersive art-making workshop provided to TASIS students in the Advanced, AP, and IB Visual Arts courses.

 In addition to individual student prints, the exhibition features three collaborative Artists' books made in February, 2020 and short videos on the gallery screen that show the printmaking process in the studio.

 Students from 2015, 2016, 2017, 2020, and 2021 are represented in the exhibition which features a wide variety of subjects and styles, all encapsulated in the Solar Plate technique. Intaglio etchings in various colors of ink and featuring Chiné-colle applique are seen alongside photogravure and design gravure examples. 

The exhibition will remain on view until January, 2021.

Remembering our annual Venice rendezvous - pondering the future of Academic Travel

Art students of all stripes are hard at work in the studios of the Şahenk Center as the Fall semester winds down. Usually, this would mean that some students were completing artworks begun during the trip to Venice, Italy for our October Academic Travel encounter with the Serenissima. Instead, this year, the week-long travel was canceled for the reason that travel to most of our usual destinations is not allowed or would require self-quarantine on arrival and on return to campus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As an alternative, Ms. Natalie Philpot and the Academic Travel team collaborated with the Visual Arts department to offer modified weekend journeys to cities in Switzerland where travel is permitted and where there are world-class museums to visit, as well as modern architecture and European culture to soak up. One group was able to travel to Basel in October, but proposed trips to Bern and Lausanne were also canceled due to concerns over health and safety as numbers of cases rose across Switzerland and Europe.

Students and faculty alike lament the interruption to the historic and annual sojourns to Venice. The same can be said for many of the traditional trips to destinations like Rome, Florence, and the Alps. 2020 will go down in TASIS history as the first year for many decades where students did not have the opportunity in the Fall semester to take their education out of the classroom and into the streets and villages to discover the history, science, the natural world, and art from their studies.

The Venice Art and Photography trips were developed by the long-time Art department chair and founder of TASIS Photography, Horst Dürrschimdt, and refined over time by art and photography groups. In recent years the IB Visual Arts classes have benefitted from visiting the Venice Biennale of Art and taking in the many and varied ideas in contemporary artworks and curation.

Through the summer and autumn of 2020 students and teachers have seen images and video clips of an empty Venice, void of the throngs of tourists that flock to the city, arriving in the large cruise ships that usually dock in the lagoon. The lack of tourist presence has been disastrous for the local economy, but the water of the canals has cleared and the tourists have been replaced by birds and other wildlife.

There is no guarantee that art students will have the luxury of a week-long visit to Venice in 2021, even if travel restrictions are lifted and the danger to health from the pandemic is abated. TASIS Headmaster Christopher Nikoloff has announced that Academic Travel as traditionally offered at the school is suspended and that organized student travel will happen on weekends and long weekends throughout the year.

For now, students in the classes of 2021 and 2022 are the last from TASIS to have had a week in Venice concentrated on sketching, painting, and photography. As the autumn turns to winter, one must hope that the future will find new students from TASIS roaming the walk streets and riding the Vaporetto in the discovery of Venice, Italy.

Over 15% of the TASIS Class of 2020 Accepted to Art Schools

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TASIS has a long tradition of students moving on to pursue the arts beyond graduation, and the Class of 2020 is no exception. Matter of fact, the number of students accepted to both degree and foundation art, architecture, and fashion programs all over the world is quite remarkable.

Here is a list of the colleges/universities where our students have been accepted. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic it remains to be seen how many of these students will attend one of the art schools where they have been accepted. Many students and their families are weighing options on health and safety.

Parson’s New York - The New School (4)
Parson’s Paris - The New School (1)
Central St. Martins (2)
Savannah College of Art and Design (1)
Maryland Institute College of Art - (2)
University School of the Arts London - (6)
Goldsmiths - University of London (1)
Temple University Tyler School of Art and Architecture (1)
The Courtauld Institute - University of London (1)

The Ferit Şahenk Fine Arts Center houses studios for drawing and painting, ceramics, architecture/design, and a photography lab/darkroom. The building hums with activity from morning until night. Art becomes a way of life for many TASIS students.

Enjoy photographs from The American School in Switzerland (TASIS) located in Lugano!

Printmaking in Granada

For the first time since 2016, TASIS advanced art students returned to the Printmaking studio of master printer Maureen Booth in Pinos Genil, Spain. Despite the late winter dates at the end of February, the group was treated to warm, spring-like weather, and in 3 days of intense work, they produced a great variety of artwork using several printing techniques.

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Sixteen TASIS students from IB Visual Arts, AP Drawing, and Advanced Drawing and Painting classes participated in the workshop. Teachers Martyn Dukes and Frank Long helped each to prepare some work at school prior to departure so that they could maximize their time in the studio with Maureen.

Plates were made using the photo-polymer Solar Plate process. Students used artwork created on acetate sheets with India ink or paint markers to make more traditional type intaglio plates, and they used positive digital prints on acetate to create photogravure plates. Maureen instructed the group on making proof prints with black ink and then a series of creative techniques including combinations of colored inks, chin colle' using handmade papers, and the creation of small artists' books. Students might use the completed work for AP portfolios, IB exhibitions, and personal portfolios for college applications.

The Academic Travel trip included a visit to nearby Granada for an afternoon of exploring the old city below the Alhambra in the narrow streets and wide plazas filled with the mix of Moorish and Spanish architecture. 

TASIS Winter Art Exhibition

Each year the TASIS Visual Arts department puts together an exhibition of work by beginning and advanced photographers. This year advanced drawing and painting students will also be showing some of their work. The exhibition will open at 4:00 pm on Friday, January 24 with a reception for the artists and photographers. The show will remain up until late Sunday afternoon.

For many of the AP Art and Design 2D and the first-year IB students, this weekend is an opportunity to showcase their work. AP students are in the middle of producing a sustained investigation of 15 pieces that will be sent off to evaluators in early May. The first-year IB students are working on ideas and experimenting with different processes as they create a sound base for further study before their final IB show next year.

We invite all members of the TASIS community, family and friends to take time to enjoy the efforts of these visual artists. The work in this show represents hours of time in the studios and the darkroom. The video below is an example of some the work by advanced photography students. All of this work and more will be included in the exhibition.