Staff at Newhall Elementary School transformed the campus from its normal space to an art gallery and filled the walls with artwork from students across all 10 schools in the district.
The Newhall School District hosted its annual districtwide art show to showcase the artwork created by so many students. Families were encouraged to attend, walk through the halls at Newhall Elementary and enjoy the gallery of artwork.
“I think that it’s wonderful that they’re able to do this,” said Cristina Kavoto, whose son attends Wiley Canyon Elementary School. “[It’s great] for the parents, and just to showcase all the kids. There’s such talent and it’s beautiful.”
Kavoto’s son had created landscape artwork of the Northern Lights. Kavoto said she was proud of her son for creating art, and the art show was inspiring for herself, as she can take back some of the ideas she saw to her students and colleagues, too.
Crowds of students and families roamed the halls at Newhall Elementary School as they looked for their students’ artwork.
Newhall district students created a range of art such as self-portraits, landscapes, abstract pieces, realism artworks and more, in an array of colors, shapes and styles.
Art teacher Kim Ferguson said this was her fifth art show.
According to Ferguson, Newhall district teachers teach art and continue to be trained in that subject. However, there are two credentialed art teachers who go to classrooms in third through sixth grades, herself and one other.
She and her colleague split the 10 school sites between themselves to teach four classes a day for about 70 minutes at a time.
“We’re really fortunate that they’ve actually carved out this time for us to be able to go into the classroom and teach art,” Ferguson said. “Our goal is to teach the basics, which are called the elements of art and principles of design, as well as incorporating the California state standards.”
But they do much more than that as they touch on art history, and collaborate with teachers to create projects that combine art with lessons from students’ regular subjects.
“I would like to give a shout out to all the teachers in this district,” Ferguson said. “Their plates are full, yet they still welcome the art teacher to come into their classrooms. They even follow up a lot of times with more projects that are like extensions to what we’ve done.”
For example, if sixth graders are studying Egypt, then Ferguson will come in and she might discuss terracotta soldiers and how to build them out of clay.
Students were excited to show off their artwork to family members.
“The real important part of what they do with art is they learned that they can make mistakes, and then they can fix those mistakes,” Ferguson said. “They can even take that mistake and incorporate it and make it into something that’s part of their project.”
“There’s no final correct answer necessarily, and everybody’s art is different.”
