The Art & Design Department regularly collaborates with Upper School clubs during the school year on service initiatives that benefit both the D-E community and local organizations. One example is the HOPE Fashion Show, an annual fundraiser organized by the HOPE: Fashion with a Purpose club and Adviser and Art & Design Teacher Caitlyn Young.
Of Ms. Young, Ms. Diaz said, “She’s turned the fashion show from what was a very small endeavor to this very large, cross-divisional endeavor that features Lower School students walking the runway [as well as] Middle and Upper School students.”
This year, the creative talents of all three divisions were on display as part of the fashion pieces and set design. The event, with the theme of Whimsical Fairytale, included a silent auction and live musical performances, and all proceeds (more than $5,000 raised) benefited the Limb Kind Foundation, which provides support and prosthetic care to child amputees.
Another student organization, Art in Action, advised by Art & Design Teacher Rachel Deutsch-Brusky, repurposed a threedimensional tree they created for the HOPE Fashion Show to exhibit in the Lower School’s Drapkin Hall lobby. According to Ms. Brusky, the mission of Art in Action is “to help and inspire the community inside and outside of D-E through the visual arts.” She added, “With each project the club works on together as a team or individually the goal is to make the world and our community at D-E a better place.”
In the spring of 2024, Art in Action answered the call from an oncologist at the Columbia University Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center in New York. Dr. David Horowitz, the father of Art in Action club leader Mara Gualtieri-Horowitz ’26, mentioned to Ms. Brusky that the newly renovated Radiation Oncology Department was in need of artwork for its walls and asked if the club could help. Art in Action happily obliged and students and faculty completed a series of paintings, composed of landscapes and city sights, this year. Ms. Brusky plans to organize an artist reception in the fall when the artwork is installed.
Ms. Diaz asserted that the Art & Design department has a responsibility to engage in such initiatives. “[For students,] it’s bringing some of themselves to the needs of the world, whether it’s decorating the hospital oncology walls or participating in the HOPE Fashion Show and helping to raise money for the Limb Kind Foundation.” It’s using art to be a citizen of the world.
