home - PHS Visual Art Department

Welcome to the Pewaukee High School Visual Art Department. You will find many visual art resources, links to our programs, classes and more. Take a browse and explore.

Discipline Based Literacy in Art

Last week as most of you were savoring the final days of summer break, the PHS teachers were participating in an inservice called Discipline Based Literacy. The main premise was increasing the awareness of how we develop literacy in every subject area. Each discipline has unique ways that they "read" and interpret what they read.

In the Visual Art program literacy is inherent in all the units we teach. Students communicate visually, but also in written form. The critique process - looking at art, talking about art and writing about art, plays a big role in literacy in the art room. As a team the K-12 Art educators developed the following How We Read Art list. Students will also receive bookmarks to help them remember and posters of these are hanging in the classrooms to help with literacy development.

Click here for an archive of September-December 2013
January 2014 Archive
January-February 2014 Archive
March Archive 2014
June Archive 2014

Hey I Wanna See Some Art!

There are lots of art galleries within this site. If you click on the class tab at the top a drop down menu will show all the classes we offer in the Visual Art Department. Each of those pages has a gallery of some of the works created by students in the course, (except for those that are new courses). There is also a chart of all the courses offered that may be helpful to plan your art future.

Scan the QR code To Come to This Site

So Why This Website, Not School Fusion?

We decided this site could provide us more flexible options to highlight the many fabulous accomplishments of our students. School Fusion will be the basic splash page for you and your student to access a link to this site. At each School Fusion Class page you will find a link to the class page for that specific course here.

Now that Pewaukee High School is a Google school and students have google accounts we decided to utilize the many tools that Google has to offer. To that end, homework assignments and deadlines will all be posted via the Google Calendar embedded on the Calendar Tab. Students will be given instructions how to subscribe to the calendar or they can always just visit the tab. When you click on a calendar event it will give you a description of the event details.

You may also want to subscribe to the Art Blog embedded here on the site. There will be updates and Art News posted regularly. You can subscribe via RSS or email.

Welcome to the 2014-15 School Year

Cool, crisp days with light breezes, insects whirring, soft evenings with a chill in the air- sounds like fall right? Actually that description would accurately portray this past summer, which flitted past and almost felt like it never quite became a true summer. With a late beginning and early return to school, summer is already over and it's time to look ahead to the school year to come.

This website is the place where students, parents and community members can learn about the Pewaukee High School Visual Art program. Please bookmark this site and subscribe to our Art News Blog to receive regular email updates. Looking ahead to the new school year we are thrilled to be offering more choices for students to better serve them and give them more richly diverse art experiences. For a detailed account of the new curricular offerings click the tab that says Art Classes.

The past school year was filled with many achievements for the Visual Art students and teachers of Pewaukee. Here's a list of a few of the highlights.

Achieved highest number of students honored in the Scholastic Arts contest, with five honorable mentions
Exhibited 42 works of art at the Waukesha Civic Theatre during winter Art Crawl.
Raised over $2000.00 for art programs and scholarships through Tile-A-Mile, community art-making event
PHS Art Club provided community service to River Hills West Nursing Home, the PHS Special Education Buddies Dance, PHS Drama department and PHS Homecoming and Student Senate.
100% of AP Art students achieved passing scores on their exam/portfolio
Exhibited K-12 art at the Barnes and Noble store in Brookfield Square
Developed new curriculum to better serve students in the 21st century including the addition of 30 iPads and digital art-making apps
Graphic Design class partnered with the Pewaukee Kiwanis to design the winning Beach Party tee shirt and River Run buttons
Mrs. Bjork attended the National Art Education Association convention in California
Mrs. Bjork authored and published an article about PHS art program in School Arts, a National Art Education magazine

For more details on the previous school year click the links in the archives here.

Meet the PHS Visual Art Teachers

The Visual Art Department is home to two visual art educators. Ben Lamp and Jeanne Bjork. We are both passionate about connecting the PHS Visual Art students to the many fantastic arts organizations and communities in Milwaukee and around the world. If you have questions the best way to reach us is via email. Just click our names or our pictures and it should take you directly to the email address.

Mr. Lamp teaches Introduction to Art, Sculpture 1 & 2, Second semester sections of Painting 1 , Drawing 1, Art History and one section of Introduction to Digital Media.

Mrs. Bjork is the department head and teaches First Semester Drawing 1, Painting 1, Digital Photography 1 & 2, Drawing2/Painting2, Animation and Experimental Video, Graphic Design, and Introduction to Digital Media.