Montlake Art Studio

Overlooking the tall woods of the Arboretum and the nearly panoramic view of Lake Washington and Cascade Mountain Range rules the sunlight Art Studio of Montlake Elementary.  Our community believes that a vigorous art program is essential for all students and their ability to develop, grow and thrive.

Curriculum

All students meet 2-3 times a week for 40 minute class sessions.  Units include drawing, painting, clay and sculpture (including paper mache, cardboard construction and sewing).  We explore relevant artists, both historical and contemporary, and challenge ourselves to make meaning of their work and lives. Montlake’s Art Studio also hosts yearly traveling art collections from the Seattle Junior League.

Additional events that round out the art program at Montlake include:

• Art Walk and Spring Concert happens only once a year-a grand outdoor party celebrating the best things in life, food, music, art and friends. Listen to children play the ukulele, fall in to a food coma with tacos, ice cream and crepes. Be amazed at paper mache pigeons, clay slugs and hanging fleece popsicles. This is Art Walk -the greatest, most fantastical evening of the year!! Look for neighborhood posters in mid May!
• The Montlake Experimental Secret Arts Society or MESAS is a guerilla arts group, with members in the hundreds now. MESAS meets weekly to discuss, create, share and install various art projects around the school campus and neighborhood.  They have participated in a fall and spring Lost and Found Fashion Show, issued counterfeit parking tickets, fortunes, letters to world leaders and
  dedicated their free time to making life more interesting for all. For this, we thank and salute them.
• The Montlake Review is a quarterly publication produced from the massive quantity of doodles received in a submission box located in front of the Art Studio. The Montlake Review, now in it’s 24th issue, is loaded with hundreds of original art, and carried at the Montlake Seattle public library branch, Seattle Art Museum gift shop (although due to high demand, rarely available) and finer little libraries throughout the neighborhood.  Behold!

Montlake Elementary, Museum of Museums

• Cats v. Dogs, February 2022
• The Right Shoe, November 2022
• Sweet Tooth, January 2021
• Put a Bird on It, March 2021
• Portrait of an Artist’s Mother, February 2022
• The Greatest Hits, Montlake All School Exhibit, January 2020, SAM
• The Museum of Tolerance, Bezos Foundation Collaboration, 2019 Los Angeles

When you know who you are; when your mission is clear and you burn with the inner fire of unbreakable will; no cold can touch your heart; no deluge can dampen your purpose. – Chief Seattle, Duwamish

September 2018

Wayne White, the Boren Sisters and the Duwamish people-Contrary to rumors, I did not make the 14 foot puppets hanging in the stairwell over the summer! They were generously gifted to Montlake by the fantastically imaginative artist Wayne White, multiple Emmy winner (and honorary MESAS member) for his work on Pee Wee’s Playhouse, music videos including Peter Gabriel and Smashing Pumpkins and the subject of the documentary Beauty is Embarrassing. Here Come the Boren Sisters were displayed at the Seattle Art Fair this summer and featured in the Seattle Times (you can read the article at the base of the northern staircase!) and now reside in our historical building. Like all good art, they have inspired much conversation, personal reflection and research. We will be looking at the role of the Boren family and the very first people of Seattle, the Duwamish, and how both groups impacted on one another and our city.

Montlake Art Studio welcomes you! Come inside and see what comes to life in Ms. Lundgren’s studio. Your students imagination and creativity are in full gear the moment they step inside.