Visions of College Project

Visions of College
A Silhouette Project

What will college be like for you?

This assignment asks students to engage in making a prediction about what their college life will look like and feel like. They will reflect on their environment and their community in the creation of this project. As we present these projects students will see the powerful way art is used to make a commentary about society. It will include at least one significant person and include several details about the life they will engage in when they go to college: people, challenges, opportunities, buildings, classrooms, dorm rooms, items they come across, feelings, emotions and college activities are all to be reflected upon and potentially focused upon as the subjects of their projects.

Students will spend time in class reflecting on their thoughts about college (feelings) and record the images that stand out in their minds. Students need to stop and reflect on these images and record them in their notebooks. These individual images will be brought together into a compilation of images and applied to their posters showing an overall scene or snap shot of college life.

Students will draw out the silhouettes of the images they recorded in their notebooks (at least ten per student). Students will then spend time drawing the outlines of their images, cutting them apart and then bringing them together to create their final silhouettes. Student work will be displayed after being presented to the class. Only that work that is done to the highest quality will be put on display.

The picture below shows the art of Kara Walker who uses precisely cut pieces of paper to make the silhouettes below.