ArtQuest About Us

The ArtQuest Program
ArtQuest has been recognized in many different forms over the years. Most recently, the program received the California School Board Association's 2007 Golden Bell Award. The program has also been the recipient of the the Jack London Award for 1999, given to the educational program which best exemplifies exceptional and innovative education in Sonoma County. In 2003, The ArtQuest Program was the subject of California Assembly Resolution 560, written by Assemblywoman Patricia Wiggins, which honored Santa Rosa High School and the ArtQuest Program. Also in 2003, ArtQuest was honored by the California Lottery Association as a model for recipients of lottery funding.

ArtQuest is consistently sought out for collaborations to perform, exhibit or create commissioned works with professional and community arts organizations including the Santa Rosa Symphony Orchestra, the Sonoma County Museum, the Sonoma Museum for the Visual Arts, the Cultural Arts Council of Sonoma County, THE COWS in Sonoma, and the City of Santa Rosa's youth employment ArtStart Program. ArtQuest has also been the catalyst, the grant writer and the central organizational body for the four–year Local Arts Education Partnership Grant, partnering with the Cultural Arts Council of Sonoma County and bringing guest artists and meaningful art education opportunities to students at seven other Santa Rosa City elementary schools and the Santa Rosa Middle School. The California Department of Education and the California Arts Council recognize The ArtQuest Program as Exemplary.

Each year ArtQuest claims a large percentage of the Sonoma County students who attend the highly competitive California State Summer School in the Arts Program at Cal Arts, Valencia as California Arts Scholars selected by the California Arts Council. The Cultural Arts Council of Sonoma County honored the SRHS choir and the ArtQuest Program for the multi-disciplinary Symphony project, A Child of Our Time. A film about the project, made by academy-award winning documentarian, Tommie Smith will be released soon.

Digital Arts
Santa Rosa High School has been pleased to host the Annual Parting Shots Student Film and Animation Festival since 2005. The ArtQuest Digital Arts students have received Best 2-D Animation and Best 3-D Animation on several occasssions.

In 2003, our Digital Arts students, competing with 7000 other students, won Best Art Animation for Rack Em Up at the 2003 California Student Media and Multimedia Festival which was presented at Foothill College in Los Altos, California. We were also honored to participate in the Sonoma Valley Film Festival in Sonoma as well as the Tower of Youth Film Festival in Sacramento. Animations by ArtQuest Digital Arts students were shown at both of these prestigious events. Last year, our students received Best of Show and an Honorable Mention in the Digital Category from the Zone of Focus Photography Exhibition held at the Cultural Arts Council of Sonoma County Gallery in Santa Rosa.

The Academy of Art College in San Francisco has recognized several of our Digital Arts students for their excellent work by awarding eight Scholarships and Portfolio Grants (totaling over $15,000). This is an excellent opportunity for students to continue their studies in animation at the Academy during the summer.

In the past, over seven ArtQuest Digital Arts students have been accepted to the prestigious California State Summer School Program for the Arts (C.S.S.S.A) held at CalArts in Valencia, California. Students accepted into this program are named California Arts Scholars and receive the California Arts Scholar Medallion from the Governor’s Office. The competition for a place in the Animation Department is intense. In 2002, only one in four applicants (statewide) was invited to become an animation student. For four intense weeks, these student animators will explore the theories, practices, and techniques of the art form. They will spend Mondays through Saturdays in workshops and classes on animation, storyboarding, life drawing, movement and other related subjects. They will also attend screenings of animated films (historical, contemporary, international and experimental) as well as a Movement Workshop.

The Photography Program established and developed Zone of Focus, an annual juried photo exhibition produced by ArtQuest and Friends of ArtQuest that provides a professional venue for young photographers from Sonoma, Marin, Napa, Mendocino and Solano counties. One recent graduate was, as a freshman, admitted to the UCLA Photography department. ArtQuest Photography has single-handedly raised the bar of photography for secondary level students across several North Bay counties.

Video Arts
ArtQuest Video student films have been featured in the Tower of Youth Film Festival, a national youth oriented festival in Sacramento. Other student films were category winners in the California Student Multimedia Festival on several occasions. In 2006 two of the student's films won spots in the International Student Film Festival. Our student's films have also won in various categories at the Parting Shots Film Festival, a Sonoma County high school film festival. Furthermore, the Video Arts student's films have been featured at the Cinema Epicurea—Sonoma Valley Film Festival as part of the festival's youth outreach program. And, in 2006 and 2007, Video Arts students have won the High School Category of the California Community College's Media Arts Awards. Our students have gone on to study film and animation making at the School of the Visual Arts in New York, U.C. Santa Cruz, San Francisco Art Institute, University of Arizona, San Francisco State University and Cal State Long Beach.

Visual Fine Arts
Visual Fine Arts boasts alumni at NYU, Pratt University in New York, California College of Arts and Crafts, the Fashion Design Institute in New York, Design Center in Pasadena, The Museum School of Boston, The Chicago Art Institute, and Cooper Union in New York. The San Francisco Art Institute has selected The ArtQuest Program as a partnership school, bestowing a minimum $40,000 scholarship for at least one Visual Fine Arts student each year. Our students frequently receive substantial merit scholarships from these institutions. The Napa Valley Oxbow School, a visual arts boarding school in Napa founded by the Robert Mondavi family, each year selects an ArtQuest Visual Fine Arts student to attend their highly competitive program often providing a scholarship. The California Arts Education Association, the state's pre–eminent professional organization, awards ArtQuest Visual Fine Arts students a large proportion of its scholarships. Typically, ArtQuest students garner 4 out of the 17 scholarships awarded statewide. Visual Fine Arts Advanced Placement students' National College Board scores demonstrate a remarkable 95%+ passage rate over the past 8 years, compared with state and national 63%.

Many of our Dance students attend the prestigious Bates Dance Festival in Maine. 2001 graduate Bernadette Alverio, after working with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company in New York, has returned to Northern California to open her own dance studio, Expressive Motion. Past ArtQuest student, Brian Enos, after working as a dancer and one of the youngest-ever choreographers with the Houston Ballet, has joined the Hubbard Street Dance Theatre Company in Chicago. And, ArtQuest Dance has formed a partnership with Sonoma State University to offer full scholarships to Dance students of exceptional promise.

Theatre Arts is the only secondary school program in the area primarily committed to ensemble–based and classical training for actors which is focused entirely on serious, provocative theatre. Theatre Arts, which has consistently won awards in Production, Duet Scenes, and Monologues, took Superior Production and a Gold Award for 2002 at The Lenaea Festival. The Hayward Shakespeare Festival awarded our Drama students both 1st and 2nd Place in Women's Duets and 1st and 2nd Place in Women's Monologues. Drama Graduates currently study Theatre Arts at several notable institutions including Brown University, NYU, The American Music Dramatic Academy, The Cornish School of the Arts, Wesleyan College and The American Repertory Theatre at Harvard.

Instrumental Music
Performing last May, as California's representative to the National Festival of the States, our Instrumental Music Program once again earned high marks. The Symphonic Band, Chamber Winds and Orchestra each earned Unanimous Superior ratings for the 10th year in a row! Instrumental students continue to be accepted to and receive scholarships at the very top music schools, including USC, Oberlin, and the like.

Vocal Music
Vocal Music at Santa Rosa High School continues to be nationally acclaimed and the Director, Dan Earl has been honored by The Cultural Arts Council of Sonoma County Achievement in the Arts Award Showcase. In 2003, The Concert Choir competed in the International Musical Festival in Northern Wales. In 2001, the choir toured and sang all over Italy, even performing at the Vatican for the Pope. Perhaps the single most significant honor was to have The Chamber Singers invited to sing at the National Conference of the American Choral Directors Association held in Chicago in 1999.

The Concert Choir and Chamber Singers have joined forces with the Santa Rosa Symphony Orchestra, directed by Jeffrey Kahane, to sing such great choral masterpieces as Chichester Psalms by Leonard Bernstein, Celebren Publiquen by Manuel de Zumaya, Choral Symphony (9th) by Ludwig von Beethoven, A Survivor from Warsaw by Arnold Schoenberg, War Requiem by Benjamin Britten, Karolju by Christopher Rouse, Beethoven's Choral Fantasy and Sir Michael Tippett's A Child of Our Time. Presently they are preparing Brittens' Spring Symphony and Brahms' Nanie.

Vocal Music students have attended or are currently attending Northwestern University, The Opera Program at Boston University and Juliard. A 1993 graduate, Jenny Rivera, is currently a principal in the New York City Opera. In 2006, 17 past students, all professional musicians, performed in the Alumni Gala Concert celebrating Dan Earl's 25 years of award–winning teaching at Santa Rosa High!