by Noella Noelophile®
(SPAA Student Art Show, 2015.)
Would you like to help San Pedro Art Association encourage some talented artists?
Mark your calendar for Sunday afternoon, August 21st, 2-5 pm in San Pedro. Free admission, refreshments and a chance to see a lot of kids smile!
But before I give you more specifics, here’s a quick story.
A favorite memory
The time: the 1960s. The place: a public-school classroom in New York. Thanksgiving is a few weeks away, and a first-grade class is hard at work, making turkeys out of cone-shaped posterboard.
Once the students color their cones, they will attach a red turkey head with wattle.
One six-year-old has a different idea than her classmates.
As the others swipe brown crayon across their turkeys’ body shape, she instead uses a variety of colors. One small square is blue. Another is yellow. A third is her favorite color, magenta. And so on, all around the cone.
It takes her what seems like forever.
(Royalty-free image by mijung Park from Pixabay.)
Then the teacher attaches the red turkey heads to her students’ work. The art project is finished, ready for Thanksgiving.
Before giving the students back their turkeys, the teacher finds the variegated one and holds it up.
“Children–look at this turkey.”
The classroom erupts in laughter.
But the teacher isn’t mocking her student’s different interpretation. Her next words?
“It looks like a real one.”
Six words of encouragement—and I think you know who the student was. I’ve been exploring, and celebrating, creativity, ever since.
And I still have yet to make a “simple” creative project!
What that teacher did, is exactly what San Pedro Art Association is doing with their 2022 Harbor-Wide All Grades Student Art Competition. They’re just doing so on a larger scale.
The reception
Annually, San Pedro Art Association invites area K-12 students to submit their work for the Harbor Wide Student Art Competition. With three competition categories–elementary, middle school and high school–cash prizes go to the top four winners in each.
And all participants receive both recognition and art supplies.
On Sunday, April 21st at CRAFTED, in San Pedro, you’re invited to be part of that appreciative audience who may well inspire students to spend their lives developing their creativity. The artist reception runs from 2 to 5 pm, and you’re invited!
(SPAA Student Art Show, 2015.)
SPAA says in their recent newsletter that more than 400 students have submitted their work this year. The top twelve winners will have their artwork professionally framed and shown at CRAFTED on weekends, through October 2nd.
Meanwhile, more than 100 of the selected pieces will also be shown, both at CRAFTED and on SPAA’s student-art website.
Now–can you help?
If you’re in the area and have some free time, a week from Sunday, SPAA does need some volunteers to help staff the reception. You can contact them through their website, or through their Facebook page. Better yet, leave them a message, at 310-612-1949 .
And decades from now, you may just be part of an artist’s favorite memory.
