Successful visual arts program at Notre Dame looks to build on momentum.
Notre Dame junior Gretchen Altenberger won a GOLD Key award from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards competition for her pencil drawing “Enigmatic.”
Some might say, “who cares,” and point to the fact that the United States has become the world’s great superpower not because of its artists and art schools, but because of its titans of business and the business schools they attended.
On the other hand, arts advocates might say: Maybe America got to be “super” because our parents and teachers kept telling us as students to use our imaginations, get creative, and dream big. Or perhaps it was because we’ve had presidents tell us to dream really big and then go to the moon.
And here is an interesting fact to consider: Harvard, the oldest university in the U.S., opened its business school more than 30 years after its fine arts department was established.
In a 2015 article in The Atlantic magazine about moviemaker George Lucas’s plans to build the Lucas Museum for Narrative Art in Chicago, Roberta Smith was quoted in her New York Times review of Walmart heiress Alice Walton’s Crystal Bridges art museum in Arkansas: “Crystal Bridges doesn’t charge for admission, a fact that conveys the belief that art, like music and literature, is not a recreational luxury or the purview of the rich. Rather, it is an essential tool. . .[that] helps awaken and direct the individual talent whose development is essential to society.”
Essential to society. Three words that help define perhaps why Notre Dame devotes so much of its time and dollars to teaching art, a devotion of which surely has not been for naught. Witness the recent news that student-artists from Notre Dame earned 27 awards from the Southeastern Michigan Region of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards competition, a new record for the school. Or that more students than ever have been enrolling in the school’s rigorous International Baccalaureate art courses over the past several years.
Sandy LewAllen, who teaches visual art in the school’s upper division, is chair of Notre Dame’s art department. She says the trend toward IB art definitely is on the way up.
“I am seeing fewer students taking AP visual art and more students shifting toward the IB course instead,” LewAllen said. “However, that could change depending on population and need, but in general, IB students are seeing the benefit of the breadth and depth that this program offers while they build their portfolios. They are able to explore authentic themes of their choosing, work with artists as mentors, research existing techniques as well as develop some of their own.”
She adds that IB art exemplifies international mindedness on a great many levels. “It is such a great, well-rounded curriculum,” she said.
The IB art curriculum comes with a cost, however. Like the IB program proper, Notre Dame took on significant new costs when it established the International Baccalaureate in 2007, including new training requirements (and the attendant expenses) to make sure the art teaching staff was up to speed with this innovative method of teaching primary and secondary students.
Including IB courses, LewAllen said she and fellow NDP art teacher, Ned Devine, have a full load of 13 different art courses for Notre Dame students. “So far,” she added, “we are able to accommodate the needs of all our art students.”
Expanding facilities?
But the writing is on the wall as the department continues to grow. LewAllen said that since she first hired in to the school, the IB art program has gone from one student in 2014 to a projected 14 or 15 in 2018. Accommodating this increase along with the many students pouring into the other art courses in all three divisions will be a challenge, according to school officials.
In fact, there already has been some discussion about expanding facilities for the school’s visual arts department, though details and any decisions are still very preliminary.
Fr. Leon Olszamowski, s.m., Notre Dame’s head of school, is a strong proponent of education in the arts. He said that a fine arts studio at the school dedicated solely to the visual arts has been on his wish list for some time.
“Such a studio will provide a setting that encourages and fosters imagination as well as to serve to demonstrate to our art students and their parents that Notre Dame encourages and values creativity,” Olszamowski said. “Things that we’d like to see eventually improve facility-wise include more natural lighting, abundant wall and floor space, proper worktables, ample shelving and storage, and a kiln room, all of which will provide an environment that enables aspiring young artists to flourish. And, of course, we’d love to see a bright, modern gallery to exhibit all the great art our students create.”
One of those students who now is creating art in college is Reagan Kazyak. She graduated from Notre Dame in 2015 and is pursuing a double major in studio art and biomedical engineering at the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio. As a senior at Notre Dame, Kazyak earned the national Gold Key Award in the 2015 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards competition, the first time an NDP student has won this award. She said her experience with NDPMA’s art program was “truly amazing.”
“For me, high school art was not just another art class,” she said. “It was a place where we learned to grow individually and as a group. The nine of us in IB art at the time learned to challenge, support and strengthen each other. And it taught us to dig deeper into our emotions, and it challenged us to question the rules of what is or is not acceptable in society.”
It’s why I became a Notre Dame student
Another former art student at Notre Dame also had nothing but positive things to say about the art curriculum. In fact, he said, it’s the reason he became a Notre Dame student in the first place.
“I came to NDP because of the art program,” said Brennan Eagle, who now is in the industrial design program at the prestigious College for Creative Studies in Detroit. “Mr. Devine really impressed me when I came to the open house as an eighth grader, and the work in [then art teacher] Ms. [Katie] Swieca’s room convinced me that I would be able to make something of myself at Notre Dame Prep.”
Eagle said that every year he saw his art improve along with the proper work ethic and patience necessary when he’s working on big projects.
“Art pretty much consumed all my free time during my senior year, but it was definitely worth it,” Eagle added. “There seemed to be an abundance of resources available at Notre Dame and I consider myself privileged to have been able to take advantage of them during my time at the school.”
Middle- and lower-school matters
Matthew McGuire, who has been teaching art to Notre Dame middle-division students for 15 years, has witnessed much change since he first came to the school. He said the kids have been doing some great paintings and drawings over the past several years. Also, McGuire’s end-of-the-year student art exhibitions have continued to impress visitors who often marvel to find out the work is being done by sixth, seventh and eighth graders, not high schoolers.
But, like Olszamowski, McGuire has a wish list for improving his department even more.
“My wish list has three things on it,” he said. “Wish one? More space. Wish two? More space.” And for wish three, according to McGuire, you guessed it: “More space.” McGuire also said he gets much-needed help with teaching art from math teacher Joan Cross, who works with some of the sixth graders.
Lower-division art teacher Lynn Quetell, who has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Oakland University, works with her students in one of the most comprehensive elementary art programs in the area, thanks in large part to the influence of the school’s IB program, which focuses on the development of the whole child as an inquirer, both in the classroom and in the world outside.
Amazing teachers
Like the rest of Notre Dame’s faculty, Quetell, McGuire, Cross, Devine and LewAllen are part of a special mission at Notre Dame that is forming Christian people, upright citizens and academic scholars. And they’re doing so by sacrificing many of the perks that other art teachers may enjoy at public schools and perhaps at some of the other elite private schools in the area. Perks like higher salaries, bigger facilities and additional staff.
However, you really wouldn’t know there were any real wants or needs within NDPMA’s art department if you only asked more alumni about it—which is what we did.
Allie Isabell, a current student at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan, said she could go on forever about the ways in which NDPMA’s arts programs have influenced her and prepared her for college.
“What made my experience amazing were my peers and teachers,” Isabell said. “Mrs. LewAllen is such an incredibly kind, loving, and inspirational woman, she quickly became a mentor to me and still is to this day.”
Isabell said that the IB art program at Notre Dame was especially helpful to her in shaping her perception of art, the world around her, and her own creative abilities.
“IB art forced me to create art with meaning, while specifically thinking about social justice issues and the impact my art could have on an audience,” she said. “In this way, art helped me to be more aware of my surroundings, to think critically, and see the symbolism and possibility in everything.”
Erika Cryderman, who is majoring in illustration at the College for Creative Studies, is another former Notre Dame student with a recognition of what her high school art program brought to her.
“My experience at NDPMA, particularly in the art program, was very positive,” she said. “Rather than being discouraged from creating, I was encouraged to continue in art and I also received a lot of assistance in finding out what my options are for a future career in art. The teachers in the art department were extraordinarily helpful and encouraging. It is thanks to them that I continue to improve at such a fast rate at CCS.”
Cryderman’s CCS classmate Eagle also has high praise for his art instruction in high school.
“The art teachers at NDP are phenomenal and working one-on-one with them was great,” Eagle recalled. “I think that I am where I am today because of the education I received from them. Mr. Devine and Mrs. LewAllen are absolutely wonderful mentors and they care about the students and what the students create. Plus, I know that it is truly important to them to see their students succeed in high school, college and beyond.”
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About Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy
Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy is a private, Catholic, independent, coeducational day school located in Oakland County. The school's upper division enrolls students in grades nine through twelve and has been named one of the nation's best 50 Catholic high schools (Acton Institute) four times since 2005. Notre Dame's middle and lower divisions enroll students in jr. kindergarten through grade eight. All three divisions are International Baccalaureate "World Schools." The Marist Fathers and Brothers sponsor NDPMA's Catholic identity and manages its educational program. Notre Dame is accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Central States and the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement. For more on Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy, visit the school's home page at www.ndpma.org.