On the evening of Wednesday, March 27, Middlebrook Middle Schools sponsored the 2nd Annual Middlebrook Arts Festival to showcase the work from the school’s four STRIDE disciplines and celebrate the arts. The event celebrated the artists, art demonstrators, musicians, coders and culinary students.
The festival highlighted self-selected artwork from each student who takes art classes at Middlebrook. Additionally, families enjoyed snacks prepared by the school’s culinary students, heard selections by musical ensembles, and viewed several coding projects.
This allowed the community to get an insight into the curriculum and experience firsthand the work that has been created so far this year. The students made their learning visible and wrote personalized reflections in an artist statement for each selected piece.
Newly added to the event this year were student demonstrations and hands-on workshops on ceramics, painting, paper sculpture and jewelry making. The eighth-grade visionary students worked on personal pieces of varied media that will be hung at Middlebrook upon completion as part of the school’s rotating collection.
Event organizers thanked the efforts of the Middlebrook staff including art teachers Karen Golder, Sue LaBarbera and Joanna Lepore; culinary teacher Frank Proto; coding teacher Danielle Bottinger; music teachers Jenny Ginsberg, Michael Gordon, Francesca Gray, Angelica Jara, Malcolm Karlan and Janet Nobles and the custodial staff for preparing the space.