Visual Art Expo: Cross-Disciplinary Work with the Arts

The Whitner Art Studio came alive on December 9 as students, faculty, and families gathered for the opening reception of the Fall 2025 Visual Art Expo. Held each semester, the Expo showcases work from students enrolled in Visual Arts, Design, and Portfolio classes, as well as Photography, MakerSpace, and afternoon studio offerings. This year, the exhibition also highlighted the addition of Art Bookmaking to Chatham Hall’s after-school program, an expansion that further strengthens creative exploration beyond the academic day.

At its core, the Visual Art Expo celebrates more than finished artwork. It reflects how studio arts at Chatham Hall foster visual literacy, craftsmanship, and collaboration across disciplines, inviting students to connect ideas, materials, and meaning in powerful ways.

Throughout the semester, the Whitner Art Studio partnered with English and French classes in a series of cross-disciplinary projects that culminated in a striking zine wall installation. Drawing from The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin (read by the freshman class), French vocabulary structures, and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, students transformed language into visual form. These zines, sometimes called “copy machine manifestos,” became spaces for reflection, interpretation, and academic play.

French students explored vocabulary through structure and storytelling, while English classes translated literary analysis into visual sequencing and design. The result was a living installation that grew throughout the semester, inviting students from across campus to contribute and engage. Creativity became a shared language, one that blurred the lines between studio practice, literary study, and personal voice.

Another powerful collaboration emerged between the visual arts and dance programs. Australian exchange students Erica S. ’27 and Inés W.V. ’27 led the creation of thirteen life-sized puppets in the Whitner Studio. These sculptural forms were later integrated into the fall dance performance, The Things We Held, choreographed by Lourdes Santiago Lebrón.

The puppets, described as mirror representations of students’ shadow selves, became vessels for storytelling, movement, and emotion. Art & Design III students supported the project through fabrication and assembly, grounding the work in principles of Human-Centered Design. Together, dancers and visual artists explored questions that resonate deeply: What have you held? What do you carry forward? What do you share in community?

Across the exhibition, work from Art & Design I and III, Portfolio, MakerSpace, and Bookmaking classes revealed a commitment to both experimentation and intention. Students explored drawing, painting, sculpture, mixed media, and design, engaging with historical references, contemporary practices, and global frameworks such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

In Bookmaking, students learned traditional binding techniques while reimagining discarded materials as sites of expression. These artists ’ books, hand-sewn, folded, and constructed, embodied the belief that art can be intimate, accessible, and deeply personal.

The Fall 2025 Visual Art Expo stands as a testament to the vitality of the arts at Chatham Hall. It reflects a program where students do not work in isolation, but in conversation, with texts, with movement, with history, and with one another. Through collaboration, making, and reflection, students learn that creativity is not confined to one discipline but flourishes where ideas intersect.

In the Whitner Art Studio, art is not only something we see on the walls, but it is also something we live, question, and hold together.

Have a look at some of our student work this semester!