SHOWING WORK — Kids point to student work at a former young artists exhibition. The yearly young artists exhibition is celebrating its 10th year.
Every year, local young artists get to participate in what’s possibly their first art exhibition. This year’s Healdsburg Center for the Arts 2020 Young Artists Exhibition features work from students from eight area schools that all focus on a single theme — the endangered environment.
“I wanted to do something with climate change,” said Kelley Ebeling, education coordinator for Healdsburg Center for the Arts.
The idea to have this year’s exhibition focus on the environment came out of children’s art competition put on by the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation. The competition, which centers around environmental themes, chose “endangered” as its competition theme for this year. Ebeling said that it was her goal that participating classrooms may be able to submit to the Wildlife Foundation contest as well.
While many of the participating educators have decided to have their students create art focused on endangered animals, Ebeling said that the theme “endangered” was broad enough to encourage interpretation among educators.
“Just the whole idea that it’s not just the animals that are affected — that the climate is affecting animals and people and plants,” she said. “It’s broad so each of the instructors can interpret it as they want to.”
One teacher, Harvest Nieto from Healdsburg Elementary School, had her students collaborate on large combined images depicting specific endangered animals and the habitat that they live in.
During past youth exhibits, teachers had to pick specific pieces they wanted to show as part of the exhibit. In recent years, however, Ebeling has called for collaborative pieces that showcase work from every student. For Nieto, this means coming up with pieces that include all 250 kindergarten through sixth grade students that she teaches.
Nieto described one of the collaborative projects as, “Big horned sheep who are surrounded by jungle and grasses and water, and within that area you can find other endangered animals,” she said. “It’s kind of interactive for the audience and they really like that, that you can look and try to find things within the piece.”
Other students, like ones at West Side School, created large cardboard cut-outs of endangered animals and staged a mini-march on Feb. 18. The march was recorded and will be displayed at the exhibit.
Nieto added that she hopes the experience of seeing their work in an exhibit will inspire her students.
“My hope is that they come down and look at their artwork in a museum and that they have that experience of walking through a gallery and looking at other schools that have participated,” she said. “(I hope) that it gets them motivated to ask their parents to get them there and look around, and to be in a museum.”
While the topic of endangered species and climate change may be difficult for students to fully understand, Nieto said that she thinks the art project has been a good segway into “exposure to the idea that there are animals that have populations growing smaller.”
“The fact that we’re showcasing young talent here in our local community and that we have all of these different schools involved — it’s a draw not only for the kids, but also for the parents and the families,” said Andrew Akufo, executive director of Healdsburg Center for the Arts. “It’s an opportunity for those students to showcase what they’ve learned as well as their passion for their art.”
This year’s exhibition features art from students at Alexander Valley School, Fitch Mountain School, Healdsburg Elementary, Sonoma Country Day School, St. John’s Catholic School, West Side School, The Healdsburg School and students from Healdsburg Center for the Arts.
The opening reception for the 2020 Youth Artists Exhibition is Friday, Feb. 28 from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Healdsburg Center for the Arts, 130 Plaza Street. The reception is free and open to the public. In addition to light refreshments, there will be telescopes set up across the street from the Healdsburg Center for the Arts.
“It’s everybody’s favorite,” Ebeling said of the exhibit. “A lot of the people in the gallery, our staff, our volunteers, always look forward to this exhibit every year. It’s so fun to see everybody come together. It’s been just a really nice community building event for Healdsburg Center for the Arts.”
