Students Learn through Action in Creative Vizcaya

With support from the Janet Traeger Salz Charitable Trust, Vizcaya launched a new educational program, Creative Vizcaya, that connects students with local artists to participate in art-making workshops.

In May 2022, the program served a total of 210 students from Booker T. Washington Senior High School, Miami Norland Senior High School, Miami Springs Senior High School, and Jose Marti MAST Academy.

The featured artists for this program included:

Meet the Teaching Artists

Amalia Caputo, a photo and video-based artist, with a focus on memory and the archive. Caputo and students created a visual atlas of Vizcaya’s interior and exterior spaces. Together, participants were able to produce a large-scale collaborative photo archive documenting their favorite characteristics that comprise Vizcaya.

Beatriz Chachamovits, an environmental artist focusing on the decline of the coral reef ecosystems. Chachamovits’ work includes drawing, sculpture, and installation.  Inspired by the artist’s work, students created a clay coral sculpture. These works were collected to be featured in a large-scale clay coral reef installation. This collaborative piece will be exhibited for Chachamovits’ “Modeling The Reef” installation.

Shawna Moulton, a multidisciplinary artist and art educator. Her work includes paper-casting figures, illustrations on handmade paper, and watercolor painting.  Students created a relief style composition using dyed recycled paper inspired by the relief sculptures that decorate the interiors of Vizcaya.

David Gary Lloyd works with photography, digital painting, and mixed media to depict the contrasting elements between the natural and the human-made in his artwork. Students used cameras and thematic props to take portraits inside Vizcaya. They used the interior of the house as the backdrop for this project and considered elements such as composition and lighting to create their portrait.

Tom Virgin, a printmaker and has work that ranges from prints and book arts to sculpture and public works. He is the founder of Extra Virgin Press, an independent letterpress studio. Virgin demonstrated the process of creating and printing an original work. Students were able to take home a custom Vizcaya print hand-made by the artist.

By breaking up students into small groups, this approach helps students think critically as they learn different artistic disciplines, like papermaking and photography, while also immersing them in topics like preservation and architecture.

Relive the program through the photo gallery below. To learn more about upcoming programs for students and teachers, check out the website.

 

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