Slocumb Hall is an iconic Greek Revival structure located in the center of campus. Built as a livery stable for John Proctor's resort hotel in the 1870s, it was renovated extensively by the architectural pen of Harvard University's H. Langford Warren in 1910. In the decades that followed, it served as a meeting house, a boathouse, the gymnasium and--finally--the arts studio.

The late Dorothy Perloff, who taught visual arts in the 1970s and early '80s observed that the building is--itself--a piece of art, with its Tudor arches and stunning, high windows. During B block, the community's finest artists come together for class. The product of their work is extraordinary.

While they paint and draw with intensity, they engage in emotionally charged conversations, assessing and critiquing a whole array of social issues. Do Proctor girls really have a fashion "look" to which they aspire? Let's see.... black North Face parka....scarf....jeans....UGG boots? Carla is painting Peggy's Cove, a picturesque enclave just outside of Halifax, Nova Scotia, not far from her home.

The east end of Slocumb is the ceramics studio. Nine students work here every weekday afternoon. Here are Kenny and Caroline making clay slabs for a ceramic mural.

Here, again, creativity is accompanied by barbed conversations, rants and teasing. Ariel, who has no trouble expressing herself verbally, works with her hands.

She and Sam are sparring. She accuses Sam of a kind of ceramics-conceit. He quietly denies everything.

Just a few feet away, on the steps of the Wise Center, Duncan skateboards before hockey practice.

Tommy learns the hard way that a flying skateboard can hurt.