Welcome to the Galloway  School's Art Department Web Site. This site should answer some questions you might have about our class, and highlight some of the wonderful artwork our students create.  Check out my teacher page by going to the directory tab and selecting Lisa Motley. This is where you will find more information about your child’s middle school art experience.

The Art classroom offers a place where students can develop skills in an atmosphere that offers a unique combination of academic and creative studies.  As art teacher at Galloway, I feel every student has something special to bring to our class, and everyone can grow his/her imagination, with practice, patience, and perseverance. I strive to nurture students' abilities and encourage their growth and development of humanistic and aesthetic values. The lessons I create are challenging, grade-level appropriate, and enriched with art history.  As you view our students' works, I hope you enjoy the discipline, care, and determination they exhibit in everything they create.

Students are introduced to the basic elements of art which are line, shape, form, color, texture, value, and space through drawing, painting, sculpture, and design projects. Each project allows students to express themselves and to develop higher levels of abstract problem solving and creative decision making skills that they will use in all walks of life.

Through observation, discussion, interpretation, and analysis, students learn the “language of the arts”. They learn to understand how others express ideas and visual art forms. Students learn to shape ideas and emotions into images and to review the works of others, they become more imaginative, and to think independently with confidence.

In addition to its traditional creative contributions, art education has intellectual benefits to the cognitive development of students.  

Art education helps students develop higher levels of mental skills. It teaches them to perceive, to judge, to synthesize, and to evaluate. It allows them to discover and communicate meanings that exceed those possible though verbal symbols. This is developed though the following four essential elements perceiving, expressing, knowing, and evaluating. The best art programs add new ideas, innovative processes, and a broad range of materials to meet the instructional needs of individual students.

In the Galloway program students learn to:

• Explore the Elements (line, value, texture, color, form and space).

•  Apply the Principles (unity, emphasis, balance, variety, movement, and proportion).

• Use inventive and imaginative expression through art materials and tools.

• Develop self-expression through design, drawing, painting, and sculpture.

• Develop an understanding and appreciation of self and others through art culture.

• Build an appreciation for art and artists.

• Evaluate their own work and artist’s work to form aesthetic judgments.

• Learn to work and grow together as a team.