Art and Catering students recently collaborated to create a work of ‘art’ to represent the Thanksgiving holiday. The idea of the collaboration was to show students that two completely disciplines can work together to gain a different perspective on learning and that collaboration can yield amazing outcomes. The idea began with Van Veenhuyzen, who conducts a fall still-life project each year for her students. However, this year, instead of simply drawing typical fall objects, she decided to incorporate fall foods made by Mrs. Goodman’s Catering classes.

According to Van Veenhuyzen, the still-life projects were based off and inspired by the work of Wayne Thiebaud, who is famous for painting cakes and pies.

Catering students purposely chose an assortment of foods that related to the beginning of the holiday season, or Thanksgiving, including pumpkin soup, pumpkin rolls, chocolate pumpkin bread, and sweet potato biscuits with butter. These comfort foods were then arranged with other objects such as pumpkins and orange and red leaves to capture the true image of autumn. So, while Mrs. Goodman’s Catering students eagerly created an array of still-life displays featuring an assortment of baked goods made from scratch, Mrs. Van Veenhuyzen ‘s Art students, including her drawing, painting and printmaking classes, then took pictures of the fall inspired foods to create colored pencil still-life drawings. In essence, two forms of ‘art’ were combined to create a fall masterpiece that only took about three weeks time.

After the presentation, students from all classes were able to socialize, sample the food and take in the artwork created from these seemingly simple, yet delicious fall foods.

“I am so proud of the kids,” Vanveenhuyzen said, “it’s important to know the basics and learn to just draw what you see in order to create more imaginative pieces.”