Spring is the time our students showcase their musical talents and demonstrate all they’ve learned throughout the year. If you missed the concerts you can at least enjoy photos our students’ performance here!
The Lower Schoolers sang, danced, drummed their hearts out at their end-of-year concert! See the gallery here.
The Middle School strings ensemble, band, and chorus regaled the crowds at their spring performances, one in the Barton-Test theater, and one showcase in the Center for the Living Arts. Enjoy the photos here!
Bravo to our Upper School musicians on their wonderful performances! String Orchestra (photos by Coco Chen ’25), Symphonic Band, and Jazz Ensemble performed for our community a diverse repertoire written by composers from around the world. The String Orchestra and Symphonic Band also performed at The Hickman, a Quaker retirement home in West Chester, to share live music with their residents. Their performances showcased their hard work and talents! There are more photos of their performances here!
The spring dance concert, entitled A Bouquet of Movement, was a celebration of our graduating seniors and their work. There were also student-crafted dances from Upper School and Middle School dancers and collaborative work led by dance teacher Amy Grebe. You can enjoyphotos from their wonderful performance here!
On Friday May 30, our 7th and 8th grade band students participated in their first Trills and Thrills Music Festival. This festival has events throughout the country hosting school music ensembles from elementary to high school to participate in an adjudicated performance before spending the day celebrating at an amusement park. This year the 7th and 8th grade band and their director Jason Wu went to Boyertown Area High School for their adjudication, where they performed two pieces and earned an Excellent Rating which is the second highest rating in the event. They spent the rest of the day at Dorney Park! Well, done middle schoolers!
The Upper School production of The Addam’s Family was a smash! From set builders to light and sound technicians to the actors on stage, the students did a remarkable job! Enjoy photos of this fabulous musical here!
At the end of the year, students, faculty, and families gathered for Senior Art Exhibition. The Senior Art Exhibition is a summative experience that brings together works of students from all visual arts disciplines — drawing and painting, photography and digital art, sculpture, ceramics, and fiber arts created during the 2024-2025 school year. This year’s talented artists included Sophia Atkins, Sofia Burgos, Coco Chen, Ella Dobrzelewski,Adele Daughenbaugh, Nick Fabricatore, Nia Foote, Kennedy Hall,Georgia Smith, Bitong Sun, and July Wen. You can visit Westtown Senior Art Exhibition website to see the students’ work and can visit the gallery here for more photos of their work.
The Senior Art Exhibition was part of the Evening of the Arts celebration which began with a reception in the gallery and concluded with performances by our Jazz Ensemble and Symphonic Band.
We are fortunte to have robust Artists-in-Residence programs in all divisions here at Westtown. This year, three artsists worked with students to share their talents and create special works with students.
The Lower School welcomed Margaux McAllister as our 2025 Candace Freeman Artist-in-Residence. The Lower School Artist-in-Residence program is coordinated by Lower School art teachers, Kelly Nicholson and Jane Chesson. Margaux is a multi-disciplinary artist whose recent work has featured various fiber techniques to explore the theme of identity. Throughout the residency, Margaux worked alongside PK – 5th grade students during their art classes to teach the process of rug tufting using punch needles. Students learned about working collaboratively while practicing new fiber-based skills. They will be able to continue building upon this work as we integrate these new techniques into our Lower School Art Studios after the residency concludes. Margaux took the students’ work back to her Phoenixville studio to assemble a collaborative fiber work, and it was installed in the Lower School this spring. You can see the final piece in the Gathering Room.
The Candace Freeman Artist-in-Residence Program began over thirty years ago and focuses on bringing professional artists to Westtown Lower School to share their artistic process and inspiration with our students. The opportunity for young artists to work alongside a professional artist is a valuable and an important piece of our arts curriculum. You can see many of the Artist-in-Residence projects from years past throughout the Lower School hallways.
This spring Middle School and art teachers Cindy Hodgson and Marta Willgoose Salo welcomed Stephane Rowley, Philadelphia-based mixed media artist, as the visiting artist. Stephane collaborated with students using weaving, quilting, embroidering, sewing by machine and hand, knitting, and more to create a fiber piece which will be installed in the CLA. Students explored textile traditions, especially pertaining to reuse and repair such as Kantha, Sashiko, and piecework quilting to create an installation to minimise and upcycle textile waste.See her work with students here!
The Upper School was thrilled to have Westtown alum Sarah Bourne Rafferty ’00 as the McLear Artist in Residence this year. Sarah worked with students to create cyanotype prints and together they created the beautiful work that hangs in the CLA Jehan ’94 and Jeannie Chu Gallery, pictured below.
Sarah’s work ranges from photographs to books to prints with a particular love for alternative process/non-silver photography. She is engaged in a line of inquiry that stretches beyond a particular medium. Sarah is mesmerized by the interweaving of thoughts into words. She is consistently inspired by the natural world, be it her small back yard or adventures on mountain tops far away. Parts of the natural world often appear intertwined with words or lines of text as she tries to dissect what is happening with the changing of the seasons and how they can relate to communication.
She is the founder ofAtwater Designs, a cyanotype design studio that produces original cyanotypes, fine art prints and paper goods. Her more experimental and personal work is what appears here in her portfolio. She is also a teacher of photography to high school students and finds working with students to be integral in her process. Sarah’s work has been shown both nationally and internationally. She currently lives, makes, and teaches in Southeastern PA.
The winter concerts are opportunities to showcase our students’ wonderful voice and instrumental talents! In case you missed them, you can enjoy photos of the Middle School Concert here and the Upper School Concert here.
Before spring break, 63 Upper School students went on the second annual Philadelphia Arts trip. Students had the opportunity to experience different aspects of performing and visual arts, and went in small groups to learn from professionals about music, film photography, ceramics, theater, and dance.
Robert Frazier’s music cohort went to the Kimmel Center and sat in on an Open Rehearsal of the Philadelphia Orchestra. They watched and listened to them prepare for a concert series with a guest conductor. The repertoire included Beethoven’s Symphony 3, Tilson Thomas’s Agnegram, and Ravel’s Piano Concertofor the Left Hand, featuring pianist Pierre-Luarent Aimard. It was a fascinating and beautiful music-making experience, providing a window into what happens in a professional orchestra rehearsal setting. Afterwards, their group walked to Reading Terminal to debrief, eat lunch, and visit a few Philadelphia landmarks.
Shannon Moriarty’s film photography cohort worked with The Halide Project, a volunteer-run non-profit and community darkroom in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. They explored their annual juried exhibition, Living Image, which showcases traditional/historic photographic processes, and then they learned about film photography with teaching artist Pat Blocher, who led them through a hands-on darkroom demonstration. Students mixed their chemicals, exposed and developed images, and challenged their understanding of what it can take to make a photograph. They concluded their time by creating photograms using personal objects, digital negatives, and drawings.
Stephanie Wilhelm’s ceramics cohort returned to The Clay Studio of Philadelphia, an organization that works with artists and the community to build connections and educate through ceramics. Students spent time in the ceramic shop, viewed three current exhibitions in the gallery, toured classrooms, studios, the new 3D printing clay lab, and met the Artists in Residence who are professionals in the field. The highlight of the day was a two-hour workshop creating two handbuilt bowls, one of which the student kept and the other of which was donated to the PhilaBowl event! This event is an international project to fight hunger, personalized by artists and art organizations on a community level. What made this experience one-of-a-kind was that our students had the opportunity to experience the joy of working with clay while also giving back to the local community through the pieces they created.
The Production and Theater Performance Cohorts led by JustinBaker and ShawnRowley spent the day at the Walnut Street Theater, touring the country’s oldest professional theater, workshopping with theater professionals, and attending a special matinee of their current show, Hay Fever. Students brought a lot of curiosity and high energy to their engagement with these theater artists!
With AmyGrebe, dancers from Elements Dance Company and winter dance co-curricular enjoyed two intense classes atUrban MovementArtsled by Alexis Curiel. Alexis is a professional hip-hop and street dance artist and teacher and has performed alongside many up-and-coming hip-hop musicians. They started with a hip-hop class with a challenging combination and then moved into a house class, learning the history and technique of house dance and music. Our dancers maintained high energy and engagement levels throughout their three straight hours of dancing and were reluctant to leave! Between their classes and meeting our fellow Westonians, they enjoyed some well-earned ice cream and a stroll through Love Park.
Afterwards, all groups reconvened atFriends Select School, where they shared about their different experiences, relaxed, and ate dinner together before attending the opening of Swan Lake at The Academy of Music as a department.
The Performing and Visual Arts Department would like to thank the Upper School Office, Dining Services, Technology, Advancement, Communications, and Transportation for their collaboration. And a special thanks to the generosity of Deborah Cassady ‘57, who made this trip possible, keeping it free and accessible for all students to participate. Thanks also to our arts faculty who made it all possible: Robert Frazier, Shannon Moriarity, Stephanie Wilhelm, Justin Baker, Shawn Rowley, and Amy Grebe!
The Middle School play, The Edgar Allen Poe Afterlife Radio Show, was wonderful success! A tap at a chamber door, and the beat of a hideous heart evoked the very best and creepiest of Edgar Allan Poe. When Poe set out to keep his stories alive from beyond the grave, an otherworldly radio studio proved to be just the thing. Wandering spirits gathered to play the roles in Poe’s most classic works from The Cask of the Amontillado to The Fall of the House of Usher. The grim master of the macabre was a little new to radio, but his cat helped him out. Middle Schoolers did an excellent job and a shout out to teacher Jack McManus who directed the production! Enjoy the entire gallery of photos here.
Before spring break, our Fifth Graders took to the stage in the Barton-Test Theater to perform Fairy Tale Fixer Upper, a collection of classic fairy tales reimagined and re-written by the students themselves. Students also helped to create and design the set. Fifth grade teachers Andy Fetzer and Audra Deprisco rounded out the cast and Theater Director Shawn Rowley directed the show. Bravo, 5th Graders! Check out photos from their performance here!
