MAX LEMMON
STAFF WRITER

from The Perennial

  On Feb. 16, Pinewood students went on a trip coordinated by art teachers  Caitlin Miller and Jared Leake, to explore the art of San Francisco.

  First, they visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, a few blocks from South Park, to embark on a private tour of the Robert Rauschenberg exhibit, featuring many works that are characterized as the world’s first “Pop-art” style paintings. This was followed by an hour of free exploration of the rest of the beautiful artworks the museum had to offer.

  Afterwards, the students walked to a workshop hosted by a company called 1:AM, which specializes in team building exercises for budding companies and synergy. They’ve worked with notable organizations such as Google, YMCA, Stanford, and Adobe. During this workshop, the Pinewood members did not only spray paint their own murals and T-shirts, but they also got to learn about the history of graffiti and street art in San Francisco. Junior Cole Takara, jokingly commented, “We graffitied “P-DUB” on a wall, after practicing on other random objects. Then we defaced some building in mission district, and ran from the cops.”

  The students not only had an opportunity to bond with each other and learn about the history of graffiti, but they also were able to glimpse into the past life of their very own art teacher, Jared Leake. Before Leake worked at Pinewood, his social life was centered in San Francisco, renting a studio. A three-story building, it is divided into many workspaces that the renters use to store materials and create art.

 After the shenanigans of the workshop, the Pinewood students visited Leake’s former colleagues who also have art studios near the mission. The art students confided in Leake’s former studio mates,“[talking] to them about their artistic careers and about how they got where they are,” according to Cami Haber—learning interesting facts like how “[the artists] have other jobs to support them financially, [while] still able to use the space they rent out for art outside of work.”

  Finally, after the eventful day, the students went to dinner at different restaurants in small groups.

  When asked what her favorite part was, Haber commented that “[She] loved the graffiti workshop because it was something really cool that [she] had never done before and it was awesome to work with a new and very unusual medium.”

  Takara added that he would “recommend the graffiti workshop to anyone who has any sort of appreciation for art.”