Seventh-grader Lilia Holder created this painting in the style of Peter Max.
Max’s art epitomized the peace, love and tolerance message of a generation of young people. The seventh-graders looked at all his work, including advertisements, posters, painted textiles, as well as other imagery from the period. According to art teacher, Alison Roland, “They were drawn to Max’s psychedelically colorful, bold, iconic work which captures the essence of 1960s color and design.”
The third-graders worked with acrylic paint on canvas panels of varying sizes. They often used the square format Warhol preferred. They learned how to use masking tape to create the clean, hard edges of the strongly graphic style, and some learned how to use paint to achieve Warhol’s photo-silk-screen effect to give the work dimension.
The seventh-graders used the professional-grade paint, Golden Fluid Acrylic, on masonite panels.
“The paint is very special,” Roland said in the statement. “It is perfect for the kind of bold imagery that the students were painting. It is a polymer that dries very hard, shiny, smooth and opaque, contains 10 times the pigment level of most paints, and is highly adhesive and durable.
“It was an important art movement in American history, as it expresses the dynamism of the art world and the color spectrum of the entire era,” Roland said. “The joyful, peace-centered energy combined with true Americana creates an all-embracing visual experience for students as they studied these two particular artists. The students learned, too, that art can be used for social activism, especially when an artistic style, as in pop art, is so readily accessible to the general population.”
Dutchess Day School is an independent pre-K to eighth-grade school in Millbrook. For more information, visit www.dutchessday.org.
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