Top: NHPS Student Jack Grindley, who attends Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, with the student jazz band on Wednesday night. Middle: Work from seventh grade students across the district. Bottom: Detail of work by Andrea Garcia Dominguez, a seventh grader at Hill Central School. Lucy Gellman Photos.
The walls of the Atwater Senior Center teemed with art, works blooming in every direction. By the entrance, a psychedelic drip cut through black and white zigzags, the oranges and reds so bright they seemed like they were vibrating. Beside it, two cats sat upright in profile, a crescent moon behind them. Around a corner, two construction paper jellyfish swam amongst a sea of pearlescent beads, their purple tentacles bobbing in midair. Even the oversized bingo board, gone dark for the night, hung just feet away from crayon and pencil portraits of flowers.
That scene came to Atwater Street Wednesday night, as the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) and ARTE Inc. opened their now-annual NHPS student art show, a sweeping celebration of young artists from pre-kindergarten all the way through high school. Launched in the final weeks of city budget deliberations—in which 29 arts positions are on the chopping block—it became a moving reminder of the role that arts education plays in the classroom, particularly as part of social and emotional learning.
It showcases the work of hundreds of students, spread over dozens of city schools. Now that it has opened, the show runs through June 1. Many of the pieces are for sale, which helps drum up student excitement, and gives it a more formal, gallery-esque feel. All of the proceeds go directly back to students.
"I think it's amazing that our kids get to do this," said ARTE Co-founder and Executive Director David Greco, who remembered the partnership starting around 2008, in every room of ARTE's former home at 19 Grand Ave. "I just think this is a great opportunity for the community to come together and for students to see artwork" in an exhibition setting.
Mia Maysonet, a third grader at Mauro-Sheridan Interdistrict Magnet School. Her piece, a self-portrait, depicts her mom and dad as floating hearts on the periphery, around her head and shoulders.
Wednesday, that excitement hummed through the center's huge multipurpose room, rising and falling as students, teachers, families and fans rotated in and out for three hours. On the stage, huge fabric flowers burst into bloom, with gallery-ready platters of fruit and cheese spread out in front of them. A rush of strings and guitar floated through the air, as an in-house student band dipped into their jazz repertoire.
Snippets of Spanish, Pashto and Arabic wove through conversations. Behind tall glass cases, clay and ceramic pieces—and a few fiber works—beckoned in vibrant color. Holly Maxson, who last year was named supervisor of performing and visual arts, made her way from artwork to artwork in a floral pink dress. She later called it an "amazing" celebration of student work, during which she fell in love with her job all over again (the only upsetting part of the evening, she said, was finding out that her favorite piece was no longer for sale).
In the center of it all, Mauro-Sheridan third grader Mia Maysonet walked over to a self-portrait covered in delicate pencil hearts, and began to describe each element of the piece. Inspired by her love for bright, formal dresses and fashion design, the finished work shows her in a blue and purple gown, with a string of delicate red beads and two blooming hearts across the chest. On a yellow background, several smaller hearts dance around her head and shoulders, bursting into a rainbow of color.
At first, "I was struggling a little bit, because I didn't know how to make a body," Mia said as her mom extended an arm, and gingerly whisked a hanging sculpture out of the way. Then she remembered that she could turn to her art teacher, Dan Wasser, for help.
With extra guidance, she realized that she didn't have to do a full body—she could render herself in profile. The hearts, both on her clothing and around her head, are meant to represent her mom and dad. She was excited to design the dress, a sight in vivid colors meant to rival the real-life "lucky dress" that she had donned for the show.
"Doing art just makes me feel very calm," she said. She's proud of how the work turned out, she added—like a last-minute choice to depict her hair in pigtails, instead of the high ponytail that she sported Wednesday.
Top: Joanna Escandon and Kamron Samuels, who were enamored by the mixed media guitars of Pre-K students at Brennan Rogers School of Communication and Media. Bottom: Project inspiration, in the shape of crayon and construction paper jellyfish.
Just around the corner, visual arts teachers Kamron Samuels and Joanna Escandon lingered in the salon-style hallway, marveling at works by artists who haven't yet hit the second grade. On one wall, two flat, mixed-media guitars beckoned, painted a deep red and rendered in the style of Pablo Picasso, with collaged-on paper strings. Across from them, a three-pointed, multicolored crown hovered over the upside-down head of a dinosaur, its mouth open to reveal rows of sharp white teeth.
Red zigzags ran up and down its spine, making it feel as suited to graffiti as it was to pastel crayon. From where it was installed, its monstrous, glowing yellow eye seemed to rest on a row of three painted apples, done à la nineteenth-century artist Paul Cézanne.
"That must be after Basquiat!" Escandon purred as she studied the work, a multimedia masterpiece from kindergarten student Samir Guzman Rodriguez. Samir, who was not present to comment on his technique, is a student at Celentano Biotech, Health and Medical Magnet School.
A detail of Samir Guzman Rodriguez' work.
That's part of the advantage to a district-wide show, added Samuels, a teacher at Augusta Lewis Troup School, as he admired two construction paper jellyfish with wide purple tentacles. Across the district, "we do our best to make sure that our students can see something like an exhibition" every year. But some schools—particularly those without a specific arts emphasis—don't always have the extra budget to get to a museum or gallery.
At Atwater, students and their families have a chance to admire the work of their peers—and get a sense of what kind of art they might do in the schools when they're older. Art teachers, meanwhile, also "get inspired by different pieces," folding examples from the show into their future syllabi and curricula.
It lets teachers do as much peer-to-peer learning as their young charges, suggested Samuels. Escandon, for instance, left with her head full of new ideas after a year of making prints and molding quick-dry clay with her students at Benjamin Jepson Multi-Age Interdistrict Magnet School. After 20 years teaching in Orange, this marked her first year in the district.
"I feel like New Haven does try to create a cultural community," Escandon said. Even in her first year, she's been able to feel that in the schools.
"If students are into art, they want you to help them make what they want to make," Samuels added, when asked if students seem excited to get to art class. "And that is great, because you are guiding them into art on their own terms."
Brothers Juan and Jefferson Perez Reyes celebrating Jefferson's Irish Lamb-scape (get it?). Jefferson is a kindergartner at Barack H. Obama Magnet University School. Bottom: Penguins by Ahlani Branch, who is in kindergarten at Wexler-Grant Community School.
Down every hallway, in every room, beside every door, the art continued. As he pulled his mom and brother over to a mixed-media portrait of lambs, six-year-old Jefferson Perez Reyes burst into a gentle smile, leaning into his older brother as he explained each element of the piece. His brother, Juan, looked on as if he had just seen a piece by Vincent Van Gogh or Kehinde Wiley.
Done in paint and pencil with white cotton balls, the Irish Lamb-scape shows sheep and lambs grazing in verdant fields, some of them close to a low-hanging blue sky. Three different tiers of green suggest that this could be a hill mountain, with a slope at the top that nearly seems to touch the clouds. For him, it was a chance to let his imagination take the wheel.
"He likes the sheep," added his older brother, Juan, as the two chatted in Spanish about the piece.
Riley Dill, a second grader at Mauro-Sheridan Interdistrict Magnet School, with her marker-on-paper artwork.
Across the Center's wide lobby, Riley Dill slipped past an NHPS jazz ensemble—many of the students, who hail from Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, are also teachers in ARTE's Saturday Academy— and lingered for a moment beside a bright, color-blocked portrait of flowers that she completed earlier this year.
A second grader at Mauro-Sheridan Interdistrict Magnet School, Riley said she wanted to channel the four seasons, with colors meant to conjure the cooling of fall, snow and ice of winter, and orange-pink sunsets that she associates with longer days in the spring. As an aspiring fashion designer, Riley loves art class, she said. She already looks up to Wasser as one of her artistic role models.
So when she found out that her work would be featured in a student show, she was thrilled.
"I like to be creative," she said. "It gives me a sense of wonder. There's lots of different people and different images [here] and I really like that because they all have their creativity.
"It makes me feel really happy, because you get to draw your emotions with your hands," she added.
The show runs at the Atwater Senior Center, 26 Atwater St., through June 1.