Opening Day Celebrates ISS Students’ ‘Capacity To Build and Create’
With inspiring and thought-provoking nods to great painters, poets, educators, and other artistic visionaries, Indian Springs School launched the 2014-15 academic year today by welcoming 280 new and returning students to campus for an Opening Day that featured a celebration of the school’s 2014-15 theme, “Art Fuels: Illuminating Connections with the Visual Arts.”
After warm welcomes from ISS Mayor Eli Cohen ’15 and Associate Director David Noone, ISS Latin and English Instructor and Poet-in-Residence Douglas Ray presented the 2014-15 Opening Speech, asserting that Springs is “a place with narrative at its heart” and encouraging students, who hail from 12 states and 8 countries, to “grapple throughout the year with who you are and how you can contribute to the long and continuous narrative of this place.”
The experience of art, Ray said, is really about communication. “As art demands we see in new ways, think in new ways, and reject convention, it opens possibilities for new communication with different people. We drop our assumptions in order to communicate.”
Artistic conversations are even possible between media, he pointed out. Picasso, for instance, created his famous painting "Guernica" in response to the written word: a news story about the bombing of the town of Guernica. As a way to further the conversation, Ray shared his own poem “Thinking About the News,” written “in response to a painting made in response to words.”
He challenged ISS seniors to embrace the school year as an opportunity to articulate their passions and consider how they want to contribute to world headlines. He urged 8th-11th graders to explore “anything and everything in pursuit of what you love.”
Following the Opening Meeting, students dispersed for a day organized by Commissioners of Citizenship Catherine Grady ’15 and Priscilla Jones ’15. Additional highlights of the day included an abbreviated class schedule, class photos, and small-group, faculty-led discussions of the school-wide summer reading, “Drawing Us In: How We Experience Visual Art." Throughout the school year, about 30 talented artists, including a number of parents and alums, will visit the school to talk with students and faculty about the artistic process and the value of the visual arts and creative thinking.
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After warm welcomes from ISS Mayor Eli Cohen ’15 and Associate Director David Noone, ISS Latin and English Instructor and Poet-in-Residence Douglas Ray presented the 2014-15 Opening Speech, asserting that Springs is “a place with narrative at its heart” and encouraging students, who hail from 12 states and 8 countries, to “grapple throughout the year with who you are and how you can contribute to the long and continuous narrative of this place.”
The experience of art, Ray said, is really about communication. “As art demands we see in new ways, think in new ways, and reject convention, it opens possibilities for new communication with different people. We drop our assumptions in order to communicate.”
Artistic conversations are even possible between media, he pointed out. Picasso, for instance, created his famous painting "Guernica" in response to the written word: a news story about the bombing of the town of Guernica. As a way to further the conversation, Ray shared his own poem “Thinking About the News,” written “in response to a painting made in response to words.”
He challenged ISS seniors to embrace the school year as an opportunity to articulate their passions and consider how they want to contribute to world headlines. He urged 8th-11th graders to explore “anything and everything in pursuit of what you love.”
Following the Opening Meeting, students dispersed for a day organized by Commissioners of Citizenship Catherine Grady ’15 and Priscilla Jones ’15. Additional highlights of the day included an abbreviated class schedule, class photos, and small-group, faculty-led discussions of the school-wide summer reading, “Drawing Us In: How We Experience Visual Art." Throughout the school year, about 30 talented artists, including a number of parents and alums, will visit the school to talk with students and faculty about the artistic process and the value of the visual arts and creative thinking.
190 Woodward Drive, Indian Springs, Alabama 35124
Phone: 205.988.3350
Indian Springs School, an independent school recognized nationally as a leader in boarding and day education for grades 8-12, serves a talented and diverse student body and offers admission to qualified students regardless of race, gender, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Located in Indian Springs, Alabama, just south of Birmingham, the school does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or sexual orientation in the administration of its educational policies, admission policies, scholarship and loan programs, or athletic and other school-administered programs.
© 2023 Indian Springs School. All Rights Reserved.
© 2023 Indian Springs School. All Rights Reserved.