Hill  School students taking Studio Art, Fiber Art, Photography and Video Production went on a studio art field trip to GoggleWorks on Tuesday, October 10.

Goggle Works Center for the Arts is a community art and cultural resource center located in Reading, PA. GoggleWorks’ mission is “to nurture the arts, foster creativity, promote education and enrich the community.”

In the morning, the students visited Retrospective, a photography exhibition by John Elder.

Students were impressed by his street photography and techniques to unveil the truthful side of human nature.

“All the photos were black and white,” Jordan Hower ’20 said. “He takes pictures of real people on the streets. This isn’t like some arts that are designed to look like how they look like. It feels real.”

Elder was also present at the exhibition and answered students’ questions about his work.

“(Elder) believes that except when the subject matter is color, there should not be color because it would be a distraction,” Eric Li ’18 said.

After talking to Mr. Elder, Li found Elder’s inspiration especially appealing.

“We see everyday images in colors,” Li said. “Therefore when we look at his prints, there’s a special quality to it that one might not feel with the barrier of color.”

The students were divided into six groups for different hands-on activities. Students could partake in glassblowing pumpkins, virtual reality painting, wheel throwing, wood turning, metal smithing, and glass fusing.

Hower, who was in the wheel throwing section, did ceramics. His group made bowls out of clay and wrote their names on them. The bowls were left at GoggleWorks and still need to be fired and painted after they are dried.

“It was my first time doing ceramics,” Hower said. “We got messy, but it was so much fun. I’m glad that I get to do something that I’ve never done before during this field trip.”