Now that schools are closed and students are learning remotely, classes look different than they ever did before, but art students at Wareham High School have been using the past to draw their inspiration. 

Art teacher Colleen Cuneo challenged about 30 of her students in grades 9 through 12 to recreate famous works of art, using whatever resources they had available to them at home. 

Cuneo said that she got the idea from an art teachers Facebook page, and that other classes around the nation have been participating in the project. “We just joined in on it,” she explained. 

She said that she sent students a variety of online links to museums and other resources to select a piece of art to recreate. She added that she tried to leave the assignment as open ended as possible because she doesn’t know what resources students may or may not have access to at home. 

She added that she will likely do more assignments like this one in the future because students seem to be interested in it, and the open endedness forces them to “think in a different way rather than just drawing.”

Many of her students chose to incorporate a self-portrait into their recreations. Jett Gorman and Joshua Debarros recreated a sculpture while wearing greco-roman style robes. In the recreation, Gorman can be seen lifting DeBarros over his shoulder. 

Others used some sly photo-editing to add a touch of creativity to their work.

Abby Wiksten drew her inspiration from a painting featuring a woman holding a plate with a decapitated man’s head. Despite the dark subject matter, her version was more comedic than gruesome. 

She took a picture of herself holding a plate, and then photoshopped her own head with some added facial hair onto the plate to resemble the original work.