Ridley Middle School, located just 6 miles from the airport, is a public school whose student body is comprised of many different cultures. The art department celebrates this diversity by studying the regional traditions of places ranging from Italy to Japan. Students interpret these topics by experimenting with a variety of techniques, including landscape painting, figure drawing, and ceramics.

Sixth-grade students at Ridley engage in a collaborative drawing workshop where they study famous portraits in art history. Inspired by the methodical gridwork process of artist Chuck Close and the classical shading techniques of Leonardo da Vinci, students selected famous figures to feature in their portraits, with a spotlight on Black History, as well as our beloved Philadelphians. They each worked on different sections of the same portrait which is made from 35 separate tile drawings assembled into a 5x7 grid. At the end of the workshop, the students gathered at one table and arranged the numbered coordinate drawings to reveal the final pictures created by their cooperative work.

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