Bridging the Gap

Carnegie, Jan/Feb 2004

The Warhol's Tresa Varner teaches CAPA students they can connect their education with a career in the arts.

Tresa Varner says students and staff at Pittsburgh's High School for the Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) have been walking through the hallways in a happy daze, still overwhelmed by the contrast between their new downtown digs and their dilapidated former home.

Varner has been reaching students from CAPA for three years. It's part of her job as assistant curator of education at The Andy Warhol Museum.

Until the new CAPA building was completed, students had to travel to The Andy Warhol Museum to learn about photographic silkscreen printing. Not only did it allow them to learn more about Warhol and how a museum functions, it also gave them access to printmaking materials and equipment their school didn't have. Because most of Warhol's art involved printmaking, hands-on access is important to understanding his artistic processes.

Students would come to the museum to look at and discuss Warhol's artwork and then go to Artists Image Resource (AIR), a master printmaking studio on the North Side (within walking distance from The Warhol), to print in a professional artist's studio. This is part of a long-standing partnership between a select few Pittsburgh Public Schools, The Warhol, and AIR. The goal of the partnership is to provide opportunities for students to work with professional artists in professional settings. Vamer is an artist herself, and her studio is located at AIR.

Now, Varner, who was hired by CAPA as an adjunct faculty member, can show students a thing or two on their own fancy turf. And with the two facilities in walking distance of one another, she can easily get students to The Warhol for extracurricular activities.

Another happy side effect of the school's relocation and transformation is the installation of a new studio that ends CAPA's two-year printmaking hiatus and returns the subject to its core visual arts curriculum. The fully equipped studio is designed to integrate lithography, intaglio, and other traditional forms with the latest digital technology.

Varner, who has a master's degree in painting and printmaking, is excited about getting her hands inky in the school's new studio. She's one of several professional artists CAPA brings in to teach its specialty subjects.

"The printmaking that Pm teaching is really something that is taught in college," she says. "I'm teaching them photographic silk-screen, and start to finish, they're doing it all right there in the building. Everything's digital, which is really amazing. There are colleges that don't have this capacity," she says.

The Warhol had already established partnerships with CAPA and Schenley High School, Warhol's alma mater, and had built a successful program called Youth Invasion, an annual event organized, developed, and implemented by a production team of area teens that includes students from private, parochial, and non-city schools. But there's always a core group of CAPA kids, who sometimes segue into internships at The Warhol to explore a specific interest-whether that is print-making, conservation, fund-raising, or other museum functions.

During youth Invasion, the students take over the entire museum to stage a variety of activities, including a juried art show with works chosen by a museum curator. The top pieces are hung in the museum.

The Warhol's educational programs encompass students from other disciplines as well. When the exhibition Without Sanctuary appeared at the museum, CAPA's literary art students discussed racial lynching in America, then wrote monologues. Theater arts students from CAPA turned the monologues into plays, and the visual arts students created a huge, multi-paneled piece that served as a backdrop for some of the performed works.

"I've met some really incredible kids through this program," says Varner. "I don't see them as average students. They're incredibly creative and very self-motivated for their age."

Many of the students had to push themselves to develop their artistic abilities because they did not receive any formal art training prior to attending CAPA. CAPA's curriculum is rigorous and demanding, and the students tackle it with enthusiasm. They're not about just turning in their assignments and going home.

"These kids are stopping me in the hallway and asking how they can make their drawing better or add a certain color or texture to their print because they just want to know," says Varner.

The museum's goal is to become a classroom for CAPA students and to write curricula that can be shared with other museums.

"From the school's point of view," Varner says, "the way they talk about it is 'We've got a museum in our hip pocket.'

"They're as excited as The Warhol is. It's this link, and now it's like this link is a bridge-me."