Meek Elementary students' art on display for the public in Future Artists Showcase this week

ARLEY - The Arley Women's Club (AWC) and Arley Public Library (APL) are currently holding their third annual art exhibit, which this year is a Future Artists Showcase that features the work of Meek Elementary students.

The showcase kicked off with an opening reception on Monday, March 17, with the AWC Library Committee providing refreshments, and it will be available to view at APL from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Friday, March 21.

"This year we were trying to (do) something different and came up with the idea, 'Let's get kids from the school,'" said Leigh Hall of the AWC Library Committee.

The artwork in the showcase was made by K-6 graders during weekly 50-minute art classes provided by the Winston County Arts Council and taught by art teachers Lindsay Johnson and Kristin Adair.

Half of the grades at Meek Elementary have art instruction in the fall semester and the other half in the spring semester.

"Lindsay is doing an excellent job, her and her helpers," said JD Snoddy, chairman of the arts council. "We appreciate all the cooperation we get over here at Meek Schools. Great students here. We just are proud that we can provide art classes and that we got such good teachers here."

There are between 200 and 250 works of art in the exhibit at APL, Johnson said, explaining that each child was allowed to select one of his or her artworks for inclusion, although a few did not want any of their work shown.

The works range from pastel chalk drawings to watercolor paintings to prints made with stamps to mixed media pieces. Some of the children chose to display their portfolios, which they make to keep their artwork in as their first project, at the art show.

A walk through the exhibit allows visitors to see how Meek students progress as artists in their classes, learning more advanced skills and techniques every year from kindergarten to sixth grade.

The kindergartners and first graders learn about shapes and how to mix colors. In one project, kindergartners painted a background of mountains on one page and then drew a polar bear on white paper and cut it out to attach to the painting.

Kindergartner Samuel Grayson Williams pointed out a special feature of his bear when asked what his favorite part of doing that project had been.

"Probably that I was first thinking that these were something dangerous, but I turned them into boomerangs," he said, indicating the body parts on the sides of his bear. "I was thinking of a boomerang combined in with a bear."

Among other projects, second graders used crayons and watercolors to paint multi-tiered cakes and also underwater scenes featuring axolotls, a critically endangered species of aquatic salamanders, which they learned about through the art project.

Third graders practiced the technique of perspective in drawing the countertops for their Soup to Share art, which featured a pot of soup and a bowl for each member of their family.

Ainsley Cornelius made a pot of spaghetti instead of soup to use in her project. She explained how she and her classmates made their pots of soup. "We cut out a piece of paper and then we put tinfoil over it," she said.

This semester, fourth graders tried out shading in their paintings of heart-shaped sugar cookies. They also tried printmaking for the first time using fish-shaped stamps they made themselves out of plastic foam.

One fifth grade project involved drawing and cutting out haunted houses and laying them out with other spooky shapes on a different colored background to make Halloween scenes. Another involved learning about Native American tribes and then drawing a desert scene featuring pueblos using chalk pastels.

Heidi Johnson pointed out where she used the technique of blending on her pueblo piece.

"I like people getting to see my artwork," she said, when asked what she thought about displaying her work in the showcase. "It makes them know that you worked hard on it and appreciate it. I like seeing other work that people worked hard on," she added.

In one project, sixth graders drew Highland cows and then painted them in acrylics with a watercolor background, and in their paintings of Valentine lollipops, they worked on shading and on using highlights and shadows.

Every grade taking art in the fall semester also made different kinds of Veterans Day art that was displayed in the gym during the school's Veterans Day program. 

Children at almost every elementary school in the county are benefiting from instruction in art thanks to the the Winston County Arts Council.

"We have one school (Lynn) that doesn't have (art teachers) yet, but we're working on having them everywhere," Snoddy noted. "They have some programs that they use (at Lynn), but we also want to include one there."