Fresh Exploration art rooms elevate Samo creativity
After years of Samo students simply peering over at construction, they can finally take a step into the new, long-awaited, Exploration Building. Students and teachers alike are thrilled to see all their art courses move to brand-new, upgraded classrooms. Photography, Film and Video, Graphic Design, Digital Design, Drawing, Painting, Ceramics and AP Art all find new homes in Exploration. These students' education will flourish with these modern, highly developed working spaces and equipment that support and fulfill their creative drives.
Martin Ledford is in his 13th year teaching Beginning and Advanced Photography at Samo and is in love with his new classroom. The new classroom is equipped with a brand-new darkroom and film-changing rooms for students to work with film cameras. The difference between the old photography classroom, located in a tiny bungalow, and the large new classroom in Exploration is like night and day. Ledford reflects on how proud he is of the work that went into his classroom.
“To have proper working, state-of-the-art dark rooms– I mean, this whole classroom is state of the art– I think it would be hard to find another classroom in this country that is as nice as this one,” Ledford said.
Manny Lopez / The Samohi
The new dark rooms in Exploration Building, a new area for Samo
photographers to make prints and control lighting more precise.
In addition to the numerous other perks, photography students also received 28 new iMac computers, along with three professional printers and a stage where students can shoot full-body photographs. Around 20 feet tall, the stage comes with green screens for working with digital cameras. This big switch from small, crowded bungalows to spacious and innovative rooms fills Ledford and his students with joy.
“I come in here every morning and I just look and realize how lucky I am,” Ledford said.
Dylan Jericiau (’26), currently enrolled in Ceramics 3 at Samo, is eager to spend his next two years in the new Ceramics classrooms in Exploration. Jericiau is passionate about ceramics and appreciates the new creative outlet Samo and Ms. Gutierrez’s class gives him. Jericiau is especially enthusiastic about the garage-style door in between the ceramic rooms that can be lifted to combine the rooms into one.
“I’m most excited that the new building offers a much larger communal workspace, and I’m happy that I can work with my peers in a greater quantity,” Jericiau said.
In previous years, the ceramics rooms have been overly cramped because of limited resources. Some of these setbacks included only one sink per classroom and having only one properly equipped classroom. However, this changed with the new Exploration classrooms. Ceramics students are provided with a yard with multiple new kilns, around 48 new pottery wheels in the classrooms and a wedging table with new wire cutters for cutting clay.
Amy Bouse, the AP Art and Painting teacher at Samo is in her 28th year of teaching at Samo. She appreciates all the work put into her new classroom to make it specially designed for the 2D art form she teaches. Provided with new tables, stools and an outdoor patio with multiple easels, all students in her classroom find a comfortable workplace. Additionally, they were supplied with many new storage units such as larger drying racks for holding artwork, a substantial supply room, and cabinets with removable shelves that are specifically built for keeping art supplies.
Comparatively, Ms. Bouse’s former classroom in the Business Building was a more temporary, multi-use room, whereas her new classroom was engineered exclusively for the subject she teaches.
“It was so frustrating because of some challenges with the roof and air conditioning…” Bouse said. “Now, it does feel like it [the Exploration building] gives more respect to the department to be a facility that’s created for our subject…To have the art faculty all in the same building is helpful,” Bouse said.
The Exploration building has greatly improved the Samo arts program, providing amazing new classrooms for students to thrive. Arts classes are being elevated through new resources, materials, and both indoor and outdoor working spaces. Students and teachers are elated by this major transformation from small, cramped classrooms to wide, spacious learning spaces. Today, students step into properly equipped classrooms where they can accomplish more than ever before.