Forget the fridge – this student art is hanging at the Steeplegate Mall

By Keith Testa - Mar 12, 2013 | 0 comments

“Words Silhouette,” Emmett Freeman.

Picture by Sangita Rai.

Portrait by Kasey Thomas.

Picture by Kat Gallagher.

Picture by Jeffrey Cox.

“Stylized Paper Cut Self Portrait,” Grace Kontak.

Portrait by Noah Lord.

“Winter Tree,” Anna Quirk.

“Cirque,” Abby Poulin.

“What’s In Your Head?,” Kayla Pelligrini.

“Styrofoam Print,” Dante Allesandro.

“Neon Dreams,” Clara Symmes.

“Cave Art,” Grace Devaney.

Sometimes, the refrigerator simply isn’t a sufficient canvas to display student art. The Concord School district opted for an entire store at the Steeplegate Mall instead.

Man, imagine how many slices of cold pizza you could fit in there.

In continuing a decades-old tradition to celebrate Youth Art Month, the 12 art teachers in the Concord district hand-picked a variety of student pieces to hang in a gallery at the Steeplegate Mall throughout the month of March. The artwork highlights the talent in grades 1 through 12 and features an array of styles, including paintings, clay work and metalsmithing.

“Every year it seems like so much work when you start thinking about it, but then you put the show up and there is this sense and feeling of accomplishment, joy and amazement,” Liz MacBride, art teacher at the Christa McAuliffe School said. “I can’t even tell you how it feels as you watch the show come together.”

Students can tell you, though. Especially those who helped assemble the display, like 9-year-old third-grader Mary Martinson, who has a piece in the gallery and also helped organize a portion of it, making her a serious two-way threat.

“It was cool because I could see everyone’s art work,” Martinson said. “I could see the high schoolers stuff and say, ‘Wow, they drew that?’ ”

The Concord school district has been hanging a gallery on a yearly basis for almost three decades, though it has been nomadic at times. It began as a show at the Concord Public Library, until a renovation led to new murals on the walls that needn’t be disturbed by tape and other potentially-marking methods of hanging artwork.

So it was off to the land of topless Abercrombie models at the Steeplegate, where the school district began occupying spaces left vacant for short periods of time when seasonal stores departed. The gallery found its way into a handful of different spots over the course of a few years – including some massive spaces that allowed more than 200 pieces of artwork to be displayed – before arriving on a “permanent” temporary location about five years ago. In all, the gallery has been at the mall for about a dozen years and this year features about 120 pieces of art.

“They are very open to having us, and invited us to stay into part of April, as well,” MacBride said. “It’s become a really wonderful community thing.”

It is certainly a signature event for the district’s art classrooms. For MacBride, who works with elementary students, it is an opportunity to peek at the progress her former students have made as they climb through the grade ranks. And for the students it’s often a chance to have their artwork on display to the general public for the first time.

Third-grader Ryan Sheehan has two paintings in the gallery – one based on a Van Gogh landscape and another featuring “figures in motion” – and has benefited from the opportunity to blend art knowledge with hands-on skills.

“We don’t just do the work, we learn about the life of the different artists and what they did,” Sheehan said.

Katheline Spencer has a fall still life in the gallery but is more fond of her two-sided face painting inspired by Picasso. That piece features two half-faces next to each other, one facing forward and one looking to the side, and allowed for some pretty interesting creativity.

“I liked how instead of a normal face we could make one side a normal person and one side an alien or something,” Spencer said. “But it still looks like it’s one person.”

If you want to find Sheehan’s or Spencer’s works, you probably won’t find them next to each other – and not because of cooties. The gallery is designed to blend all grade levels and classes to create a cohesion that is often difficult to achieve during the school year.

“We don’t categorize them based on class. This is our chance for us to be a Concord art department instead of inpidual schools,” MacBride said. “We work as a team, and it’s a great feeling to have a group of people you really enjoy being around and enjoy working with.”

It also allows the district to showcase the importance of the art curriculum in school. In giving the public some pretty tempting eye candy to look at, it’s a reminder that all of the arts – music, visual arts, dance, theater – are critical to the overall learning experience.

“From an educational standpoint, art is one of the things that helps children learn everything else better,” MacBride said. “Because there’s no one right answer. They get to use things like problem-solving skills, and there’s a lot of stuff you can take into every other aspect of learning.”