The HUHS Art Department provides students creative avenues for expression, innovation, and collaboration through a wide variety of course offerings. We have excellent facilities at Harwood, that include a digital media lab, a clay studio, and a fine arts studio. Our state of the art digital media computer lab features eighteen Mac workstations with professional level design and video editing software, as well as multiple large format photographic quality inkjet printers.  Our digital media lab has become a creative hub for other departments needing to access design and video project editing.  

Our classes are designed to meet the needs of a wide range of students. We strongly believe that ALL students can benefit from our art courses. Students develop their problem solving skills, work ethic, cooperative effort, and creative thinking (all much-desired skills in today’s job market), as well as developing a concern for refined craftsmanship.

Students often have the same art teacher for two, three, and sometimes even four years. This is one of the only disciplines in which that might occur during their high school careers. Students can look to that teacher as a mentor, someone they trust to provide good advice about any number of concerns, including college. As they get to know the students well over the years, the art teachers are often asked to write letters of reference by seniors whether or not they plan to major in the visual arts.

The variety of courses we offer add both breadth and depth to the portfolios of students who intend to study art after high school. We help students put together digital portfolios to gain admittance to leading colleges and universities. Many students who do not plan to major in art add the digital portfolio as a supplement to their college applications.

Why Study Art?

• Art is a vital part of every child’s development.

• Art is a way of understanding one’s self, one’s society and other cultures.

• Art provides the means for expressing and communicating thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

• Art education provides the gifts of vision, appreciation, and joy for the student to take into the world.

• Our promoted learning methods  promote the skill of looking closely and carefully; of noticing things.

• Our teaching strategies promote creative thinking and idea generation, both essential skills in a competitive marketplace.

• Our curriculum emphasizes a variety of methods in problem-solving, and also the idea that there may be more than one solution to a problem.

• Our department’s work promotes a sense of community through collaborative projects, group critiques, community art shows, and regular informal discussions.

• We begin to answer a young person’s need for greater independence, giving students the opportunity to generate, or modify, goals, and to develop their own variations on some projects.

• Historically, our classes have turned many students’  challenging high school experiences into success stories.  Our emphasis on individualized learning, in conjunction with the safe and relaxing atmosphere of our department, makes for a vital alternative for students who are not succeeding in a more traditional class environment.  The spillover from this daily experience in a student’s day has huge impact on student’s attitude and work in their other classes.