Fine Arts is a broad topic consisting of dance, drama, music, and visual arts. However, this article will be an overview of the visual arts section. Just like fine arts, visual arts is also a very expansive topic. 

At Gibbons, students are introduced to the basics of the creative process in these classes to find visual solutions to their assignments. 

“It’s a means of visual expression, but it can encompass anything from clay to photography to painting and drawing. Visual art is a language. It’s just using visuals instead of text or words,” said visual arts educator Mrs. Rebecca Dason.

The types of classes that are offered to students at Gibbons include: AP 2-D Art & Design, AP 3-D Art & Design, AP Drawing, AP Art History, Photography, Sequential Art, Computer Modeling, Clay, and Art I and II. 

Art 1 is one of the electives that freshmen are able to take their first year at Gibbons. Mr. Chris Kemple is one of the educators who teaches Art 1. In the class, he teaches the basics of how to use line, shape, color, value, and all the elements of design which pushes his students to build confidence in their skills. Kemple also teaches computer modeling, graphic design, and sequential art. 

“When we do something where we’re telling them something about their work and then asking them a question about it and then giving them maybe a little piece of advice on what they could do differently. But it’s all meant to be constructive. 
So we do little things like that, but also a lot of it’s just, I’ll tell them ahead of time. I’m basing you like this, and I’m letting them know ahead of time, remember all the things I taught you how to do things a certain way. Well, now I’m going to grade you on,” said Kemple about how he evaluates his students’ work.

Fine Arts may seem like students only learn how to draw, color, or paint, but students also learn lessons that can help them beyond the classroom. 

“The great thing about visual arts is that it not only teaches skills in art, it also teaches skills in problem solving and creative problem solving,” said Kemple.

According to Kemple, students who pursue arts, especially visual arts, activate a part of their brain that they wouldn’t otherwise engage in and sometimes the same thinking they use in visual arts can be the same type of thinking students use in their science courses and more. 

“So as far as skills go, yes, I want, my students to learn the basics of how to draw a picture and how to compose things and how to learn skills, but I also want them to learn how to not only solve problems in unusual and innovative ways, but to understand that having a creative outlet, no matter what they do in life is going to help them mentally and emotionally,”
 Kemple said. “It’s been shown that if somebody you know, even if you’re like a doctor or a lawyer, if you take the time to regularly, you know, pursue some kind of creative endeavor, it’s gonna benefit you in a multitude of ways.” 

“However you’re feeling or whatever events are happening in your life, you always have art there for you to be able to creatively express how you feel. 

And that’s the value that heart brings and and it makes, like I said before, it makes life worth living,” Kemple said.

Samantha Bratsky is a student who has found success in visual arts and is a former student of Cardinal Gibbons. She went to N.C. State for fashion design, and she is now designing clothes that are being seen in different fashion shows in Prague, Milan, and Paris. 

“Just do it and take take the take the plunge and,that’s the other thing is like just, risk taking creative risk taking is super super important in in terms of building your confidence and building your I guess awareness of like I can give voice to what I’m feeling and what I’m thinking and I can express it in a lot of different ways,” said Kemple.

“I just want people to just whatever find their voice, whatever it is, whether you want to sing or act or play music or paint or or do pottery or whatever it is, like find your voice and just do that and just do it as much as you can with this one life that we all have to to, you know, to do stuff in, you know, make your marks somehow, whether that mark is a giant, huge mark or a little tiny mark,” said Kemple.