YOUTH ART MONTH

This year's Youth Art Month Exhibit is now up and ready to be oohed and ahhed over. My students are really enjoying art this year, and it shows in their work. Each March to celebrate Youth Art Month or YAM the school system I teach in has a show of our students' art work at our local mall. Each year I am fearful I will not have enough student work to display and each year I have so many nice pieces I can hardly choose which ones to exhibit. The primary age I teach does not quite understand what it means to have your work on exhibit...until they actually go to the mall and see their work up on the easel. Some come back to school so excited, some come back embarrassed and others return not surprised at all and with the confidence that they knew theirs would be there all along. Over the years I have had to change the way I display the work. One year to my horror some of the pictures disappeared from my huge display easel! The next morning at school several students came to me very pleased with themselves. They thought they were supposed to take their work from the mall...after all it belonged to them. Once I got over the relief that they had taken them, and got over being a bit angry, I cracked up to think they had stolen their own work. Why their parents allowed this I am not sure. So now instead of hanging each piece individually, I glue each piece to a large sheet of bulletin board paper. This makes it easier to hang close to 50 pieces of art, and no little hands can slip their art away from the exhibit. Here is our display for this year and a movie of last year's show. This year's theme is Art Is... and last year our theme was eARTh...it has ART! Enjoy...