The Pikes Peak Prep (PPP) high school art class visited the Gallery of Contemporary art at UCCS on Friday March 2nd to view the life work of proffessor Louis Cicitello.
From the GOCA website "Cicotello was well-known and beloved regionally, having moved to Colorado Springs from Kansas City, MO. in 1984 to serve as Chair of the Visual Arts Department at UCCS. Cicotello was Professor of Fine Arts through 2007 at UCCS and inspired countless students in their own careers. As an artist, Cicotello pushed the boundaries of the media he worked with--from human-scale plexiglass towers of his early years to mixed-media assemblage, collage, and free-standing sculpture." Cicitello was a professor to our art teacher Lisa Cross in college before his tragic death in a canyoneering accident in 2011.
Our PPP students enjoyed the exhibition and were lead in an exercise called Visual Thinking Strategies. VTS is a researched based teaching method that improves critical thinking and language skills through discussions of visual images. The students would look at an artwork for one minute without talking and then discuss what they thought was going on in the artwork.
