From principal Mr.Geballe:
MS 131 celebrated our students’ creativity during arts week. The Dragon Dreamers bass club rocked the house with a some classic tunes, getting everyone cheering, and showing that our teachers and staff can really shred on the electric guitar. Our musicians performed a variety of pieces, ranging from classical to contemporary on instruments as varied as the drums, keyboard, violin, electric guitar and bass. Our dancers showed their acrobatic skills during their demonstration of capoeira, a Brazilian martial art they learned in the third trimester. Our visual artists showed both realistic and abstract pieces, and our digital artists demonstrated incredible skill with 3-D design, and animation. What an incredible week of arts!!!
The Dragon Dreamers bass club:
The Capoeira demonstration:
The Music Showcase:
The full length Music Showcase video is available through this link on Youtube: https://youtu.be/7Rj3dp1dG0M
From Music Teacher, Mr.O:
The MS 131 music students worked really hard this year to prepare for their very successful Spring Showcase that took place on June 14! As part of their preparation, they focused on learning the repertoire for their performance, as well as music literacy skills like sight reading, music theory, and instrument technique. These instruments include piano, acoustic guitar, voice, electric guitar, bass guitar, drums, and violin.
The showcase included songs by a variety of artists and composers such as Beethoven, The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Regina Spektor, Marc Anthony, Joe Hisaishi, and The Beach Boys. Some of the songs were actually chosen by the students! These include “Golden Hour”, “Billie Jean”, “Die for You”, “灰色軌跡” (“Gray Trail”), and “四季予你” (“Four Seasons With You”).
The Visual Art Showcase:
From Visual Arts Teacher, Mr.Phillips:
2023’s End of Year Visual Art Showcase at MS 131 highlighted work done by students from January through June. Highlights included the 6th Grades exploration of One Point Perspective, an Artist’s Study of the work of groundbreaking Dutch Modernist Piet Mondrian and a piece based on the breakthrough Art Movement from the late 1960’s and early 1970’s known as Optical Art, which involved creating optical illusions of depth and movement in Artworks.
After creating a Graphic Design piece using their initials as a jumping off point the 7th Graders focused on developing Observational Drawing skills through the exploration of Contour Drawing, which helps teach students how to actually draw what they “see” through careful observation and drawing of the contours of a variety of objects. They moved on to studying geometric forms such as cylinders and cubes using a variety of media including pencil and black and white charcoal on gray paper.
After completing a unit on Architectural drawing 8th Graders began an in depth study of identity and the self through a series of introspective exercises including researching character traits and identifying their own and using mind mapping as a way to explore themselves in depth through the use of text, symbols and illustrations. This unit culminated in an Identity Self Portrait using an actual tracing of the students profile as a “vessel” to contain all those things that make them unique.
I would like to congratulate all my students for their dedication and hard work throughout the school year! I am proud of you and you should be as well. Have a great Summer !!
The Digital Art Showcase:
From Digital Art Teacher, Mr.Wang:
This year Digital Art Showcase exhibited 71 futuristic 3D printed sculptures, 270 digital drawings and 3D modeling environments’ screenshots from 7th & 8th grade Digital Art students in the M.S.131 commons area. Students have improved substantially on 3D modeling creative 3D characters and virtual 3D architecture. By using Tinkered.com, students have visualized their unconstrained imagination in the virtual canvas & 3D space, and received tangible 3D sculptures in real life. Each 3D printed sculpture was carefully designed with a well-thought project proposal and intricate interesting details.
The 2023 Digital Art Showcase video featured Wujian Wang’s students’ 61 GIF animations from the 6th graders at M.S.131 Dr. Sun Yat Sen Middle School at Manhattan, New York. The stories within these GIF animation began with seed growing animations, and plant growing animations. Following the plant animations were animal movements animations. Later on, the viewers saw stick figure animations and full colored story-telling GIFs. All students’ GIF animations are created by authentic drawings in Adobe Photoshop.