Croton's AP Art Students on Display in High School

CROTON-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. – Stereotypes that once divided athletes and art students fall away in Croton-Harmon High School’s art room. Each student of the small AP Studio class will create an art exhibit of their own, each with a theme, or “concentration.” The works will be displayed in Croton-Harmon High School’s main hallway, one artist per week, and will eventually be submitted to the College Board for college credit.

The group is an interdisciplinary mix of students who pursue not only art, but also athletics and academics interests.

“These are extremely sophisticated kids, and very well-rounded,” said Jodi Burger, the AP studio art teacher. “This district is amazingly supportive of the arts,” she said.

Burger describes how previous teaching positions at a performing arts school in New York City and a high school on Long Island yielded programming intensely focused on the arts or heavily interested in sports. She said “very few of them go across disciplines,” at the performing arts school, because of the intensity of the program.

“From kindergarten we get a lot of art stuff,” said Rebecca Kaebnick, who is in the AP art studio class. Two students in the class are cheerleaders and almost all participate in sports, either as a school program or on their own.

Burger said one of the strongest attributes of Croton’s art programming is the support arts receive in the home.

“A lot of the parents are artists or have careers in the arts,” she said.

Student Jesse Morsberger’s father Robert Morsberger, for example, is a renowned singer-songwriter and the district itself is nestled in a historic artists’ enclave.

Few might be able to imagine a high pressure art class, but Burger says the AP program is designed to push the students. The program demands as much as one finished piece per week.

“I think that’s what really drives them,” she said.

Students’ concentrations range from theoretical to extremely literal. Morsberger’s “Mutations” concentration, for example, uses mixed mediums and evokes the German Expressionist painting “Scream,” by Edvard Munch. One table away, Maryam Khan paints water colors of photorealistic desserts for her concentration tentatively titled “Candies, Chocolates and All Things Sweet.”

“I just wanted something that would make me happy,” said Khan, as she painted hyper-detailed watercolor Danishes. She said the dessert paintings allowed her to explore a variety of texture and color.

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