Hilary Clinton once famously said, ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’
But since there are no real villages in New Hampshire, unless you actually consider Penacook one, and children, for the most part are raised by parents or guardians, it doesn’t really apply here. Although, if you make a couple word switches so it reads, “it takes a school community to hang a bunch of really cool art on the walls of a vacant storefront in the Steeplegate Mall,” then it most certainly makes sense.
In case you missed the memo, it’s Youth Art Month, and for the last umpteen years (which is what we like to use when something’s been happening for a really long time and we don’t have an exact number) the Concord School District has celebrated by showcasing muck of its students’ work in a giant display. We’re talking first-graders to high school seniors, and if you ever did a head count of the number of students in the school system, there’s a lot.
So each art teacher – and there are 11 of them – choose about 100 pieces from the students they work with. A quick calculation gives you about 1,100 pieces, and it all has to be hung, placed and displayed in a time frame that is better quantified in hours than days.
“This is teamwork all the way,” said Christa McAuliffe art teacher Liz MacBride. “It’s a very community oriented thing we have here.”
The bad news is that the Concord School District Art Show’s opening was last week, but the good news is that the gallery will be up through April 15 – just go in the Bon-Ton entrance at Steeplegate; it’s across from Tutti Frutti. It’s the one with all the artwork. You can’t miss it.
“What really amazes me is the work these students put out,” said Dave Speidel, parent of a fifth-grader who helped with the installation this year. “It really blows me away. I try to talk it up as much as we can.”
Guess we have something in common with good ol’ Dave.
But with well over 1,000 pieces to install and very little time to do it, there’s an all-hands-on-deck kind of approach.
“I remember when I was eight and a half months pregnant, coming here to hang stuff,” said Broken Ground art teacher Karen McCormack.
It all started last Monday, the first day after February vacation mind you, when Beaver Meadow art teacher John Hatab put up some platforms to add more surface area to hang the work. Hatab even took a personal day last Tuesday to do even more work before the big push later in the day. Once school came to an end, art teachers, parents and students made their way to the storefront to get the work on display.
“It’s a mad rush,” Hatab said.
It took several hours, many hands, quite a few staples and those small sticky squares to get it done before the opening, but after at least 15 years of doing it in an empty retail spot in the mall, it worked like a well-oiled machine – which we’ve heard works quite well. Prior to using the mall, the Concord Public Library children’s room was the place for the annual show for more than two decades.
“This is our way to showcase our students’ art work,” MacBride said.
The presentation is done in a way that those in the art world would consider salon style. It’s when work is hung any place where there is open wall space. Really, with so many pieces to include, space is certainly at a premium.
“We find places for everything,” MacBride said. “When we come into this we don’t have a plan. We are more like, ‘What’s going to fit here? Will it look good next to this?’ As we go, it comes together.”
When it comes to choosing the work, teachers will keep an eye for something that deserves inclusion from the start of classes. Over the course of the year they set things aside and pull them off the hallway walls.
“Unfortunately the space is limited,” McCormack said. “I always tell the kids that only 100 pieces go in, so don’t be too disappointed. We sneak extra ones in when we can, though.”
But it’s hard to narrow the selection down to around 100. Not every student can make it every year and McCormack knows that first hand. She grew up in Concord and didn’t have a piece in the show until she was a seventh grader at Rundlett. And now look at her, she not only teaches art, but also chooses the stuff that goes in, while seeing what former students have been up to.
“This is a way to watch them grow up,” McCormack said.
So when you check out the show – if you haven’t already – take a long look around, because there’s not only creativity in every nook, but you might just see some of those names accompanying art on one of the local gallery walls some day.
“There’s a certain type of kid who falls in love with art at a very young age,” MacBride said.
