Divisions: Lower School
Teaches: Visual Art
Khaleel Adger's classroom in the All School Commons is a colorful, vibrant space, filled with student work, plants, and art books. In his classes, Lower School students learn about Aboriginal dot art and African masks, as well as about the artists Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Adger, raised in a family of artists, is an active painter, wood carver, and muralist.
I get inspired by... watching people, walking around the neighborhood, being in nature. I tell my students to do the same, and as they're looking, to ask: What does this make me feel? What am I wondering about it? All that looking and asking will lead to an idea.
In my classes, we always... study art history. We look at reference books—I have a big library in my classroom. And we look at examples of the things we want to draw.
The first step to any project is to... make sketches, even if you’re making something three-dimensional,. I ask my students to do more than one. You may think your first idea is the right idea, but you never know until you try something different. Then, ask friends or family members to look at your sketches with you. What do they notice? What gets them excited? From there, you can decide which sketch to work with; or maybe you combine different sketches. Draw a more developed sketch.
Even though art is almost never finished... at some point, you decide to stop. Maybe you’ll come back to it later, like da Vinci did with the "Mona Lisa." Art is a process. You can always learn more, see more, keep improving.