In just a few months since the start of the school year, Chadwick’s new Ocean Institute at AltaSea has opened up experiential education opportunities for students from the Village to the Upper School. Recently, the Ocean Institute has also become a canvas for one of Chadwick’s newest upper school classes, Honors Applied Design.
During the 2024-25 school year, Chadwick established a partnership with AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles, and this year formally created the Ocean Institute, headed by Director of the Ocean Institute Dijanna Figueroa. The Ocean Institute is already in regular use by Chadwick students.
Recently, Honors Applied Design pioneered a new project: an art exhibit at the Ocean Institute.
Even though the class works mostly with digital media, Honors Applied Design students will use unique forms of physical media to create site-specific art inspired by the space.
“When I visited AltaSea, I was blown away by the space. I’m a muralist by nature… There’s some connection between my passions and what I believe the kids can do,” says Visual Arts teacher Aundrae Williams, who teaches the Honors Applied Design course.
“[The students] develop their own ideals on what they want to communicate—some issues that they find with the blue economy or the ocean or marine biology—and then we make some personal connections, and then we create something,” says Williams. He purchased a large wall that the class will use to create murals that will align with the Ocean Institute’s goals to promote sustainability.
Ezekiel Robel ’26, an Honors Applied Design student, has started working on the project. “I’m going to take my camera and just take photos of people lying on the sand, surfing, just doing what they do at the beach, and then I’m going to print that out and post it or glue it to this wall that we’ve painted.” While the class has a lot of time left for the project, its ambitions are lofty. By fusing different media, the murals enable nearly unlimited creativity.
“We’ve already made one connection: a guy who was willing to donate some found, gently used, abused, or abandoned surfboards,” adds Williams. Surfboards are just one of the many possibilities for students to use for their projects, and will play a part in the murals.
An exciting new course offering, Honors Applied Design has a small enrollment in its sophomore year, but Williams hopes that the exhibit at the Ocean Institute and any buzz surrounding it will give more attention to the hands-on, experiential course.
Although students have not yet finished their projects, they will exhibit them before the end of the school year. There is no set date for the end of the projects yet. AltaSea hosts open house events every month, and the class aims to show off its projects at one of these events, which will also attract more attention to Chadwick’s Ocean Institute.
“I’m really excited to see what their pieces are,” says Figueroa. “They’re going to be pieces that connect humans to the ocean.”
This project will strengthen the connection between Chadwick and the Ocean Institute and hopefully enable future artists and inspire other projects. Although the Ocean Institute has only opened its doors to Chadwick students for a few months, classes have taken advantage of the opportunity to make special projects like this.
