press play print

Senior Priya Singh's image of children interacting at a neighborhood park was used as the exhibition invite.

As 2nd year high school drawing, painting, printmaking, digital photo, and digital imaging teacher at Sacred Hearts Academy in Honolulu, it has been a challenge bridging the needs and desires of a Catholic High School administration with the needs of students that want to take their art beyond the classroom. 

After working towards a photo exhibition outside our school for about a year, I am proud to announce this goal is finally becoming a reality.  Our school is an all girls' private school that a wide variety of students from all over Oahu attend, and Kaimuki is the neighborhood surrounding the school that unites them.  A local restaurant up Waialae Avenue from the school features organic, locally grown, seasonal cuisine as well as cutting edge art exhibits.  For this project, I was allowed to take students off campus during photo class (much like p.e. is able to go off-campus and return before the next class) for on-site shooting exercises. Students applied their shooting assignments to the neighborhood  in order to capture the personality of Kaimuki.  At the beginning of the semester, I tell students they will learn to see the world anew through their cameras.  For this exhibition, students transformed the view locals stereotypically take of Kaimuki as they move busily through the neighborhood, avoiding potholes, construction, and graffiti to catch their bus or scramble for parking at a hole-in-the-wall niche shop of choice.  Instead of avoiding or brushing over dirty details in the name of routine, students focused on the beautiful, the ugly, and the idiosyncratic to compose a new, intriguing portrait of place.