HS Sakura Medal Voting Party

Students who qualified to vote in for Sakura Medal HS English and Japanese books and art gathered in the HS Conference Room to discuss the books, enjoy a pizza lunch and cast their votes! These votes will be added to those of all the other participating schools. We hope to hear the results soon!  Huge thanks go out to our Friends of the Library parent volunteers who decorated the room and served the lunch.  We also thank art teacher Brendan Sarsfeld for his support of the Sakura Medal Art Competition

Book Review by Ms. Sentgeorge: Art Before Breakfast

If you would like to learn to visually record ideas and improve your creativity, you might want to check out a new book in the HS library called Art Before Breakfast by Danny Gregory.  Danny believes that you do not need to be an artist to record the world around you visually, and says that, “Creativity is the act of shaping the mush of the world around us into something – of creating your own order.”

Art Before Breakfast is written in sketchbook style with each page covered in drawings. It is a visually rich text that is part philosophy, part exercises, motivating the reader to start sketching the world around them. Each exercise requires no more than15 minutes and is intended to get the reader to start down the road towards keeping his or her own sketchbook practice and gaining confidence in sketching. It lays out a week-long set of 5-15 minute starter activities to prove to you that one does not need to be an artist or talented, to be able to draw and record your life visually. The book encourages the reader to maintain a visual journal for the 30 days, the amount of time it takes to build a new habit.

Danny says that sketching isn’t about creating art; it is about recording what you are living through and what you are learning about it. You do not need to be an artist to keep a visual journal. Danny Gregory views sketching as a meditative practice, much like doing yoga at the start of each day. He advocates starting the day with a short drawing to bring ones mind into the present moment, hence the title, Art Before Breakfast. As he says, “Creativity can become a habit that fits into you life, like Pilates or flossing, only a lot more fulfilling.”

Check out this book if you are interested in beginning or resuming the practice of keeping a visual journal, or if you are interested in Sketchbook Skool.

ASIJ HS Sakura Medal Art Semifinalists

Congratulations to Maya C, Paris K, Emma K, Anna L., Marika A, and Erina Y!  Their work was selected by a panel of judges to be ASIJ’s submissions to the Sakura Medal 2015 Art Competition in the HS English and HS Japanese categories.

You can see the submissions from all the schools participating in the art competition on the HS library website.
https://sites.google.com/a/asij.ac.jp/asij-hs-learning-commons/

Winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony and Prize Drawing on May 4.

We wish our ASIJ contestants the best of luck!

The Sakura Medal 2013 Art Winners

2013 Art Winners  English Picture Book # 8 St. Mary’s International School     Japanese Picture Book # 9 International School of the Sacred Heart   English Chapter Book # 4 St. Mary’s International School   Japanese Chapter Book #5 Doshisha International School, Kyoto

English Middle School  # 7 St. Mary’s International School     Japanese Middle School #1 St. Mary’s International School English High School #4 The American School in Japan     Japanese High School # 1 K International School