As Chatham Park continues to develop its community, they remain dedicated to supporting local art in Chatham County. As part of that commitment, Chatham Park is powering our Go See This series. They join us in inviting you to Go See This . . .
Open the front door to Chatham Mills–between The Sycamore and the Chatham Marketplace–and you’ll see the first bright spots of a gorgeous Student Art Show that’s currently enlivening the halls of Chatham Mills. Students across Chatham County have created some joyful, moving, impressive work, and it’s well worth a detour down the hallways to check it out.
You’ll see everything from Photography by the Northwood High School crew, to Amate Bark Painting from a Bonlee second-grader, to Ink and Watercolor by a junior at Chatham Central High, to Tim Burton-style Self Portraits from middle-schoolers at Bennett K-8.
If you head down the hall a bit and turn left, you’ll eventually get to some self-portrait pieces by students at Chatham Grove Elementary. We grabbed a few minutes with Victoria Sylvestre, visual art teacher at Chatham Grove, on the last day of school before winter break to find out a bit more about those pieces–and the show in general.
Can you say a little about how the kids created the artwork using the photos of themselves?
Ms. Sylvestre: I teach my fourth and fifth graders graphic design on their chromebooks, using free apps and sites. It’s a lengthy process, since we also install extensions for Chrome like the eye dropper tool so they may create customized colors. It’s basically an intensive unit that builds on itself, even learning how to create custom vector shapes. This year, the icing on the cake was the creation of their selfies–first learning what actually makes a good selfie, then cropping out the backgrounds, recoloring, working with transparency, shifting the brightness and contrast, and finally adding drop shadows and reflections.
Chatham Grove students had two group pieces in the show–the doughnuts and the patchwork quilt piece. How did those come about?
What’s important about creating and showing group pieces?
Ms. Sylvestre: I think the important thing to me about the creation of collaborative art began when I was still in grad school and first met several collaborative artists. Their processes highlighted the best qualities of each artist, and came together as something larger than themselves. I especially loved it when my husband and I began creating collaborative art, but we also made it site specific. Site specific is when you take into consideration the environment it will live in, the lighting, colors of existing features . . . So the rainbow quilt was designed specifically for installation in the school’s foyer, using measurements of the space in which it will exist after the current show.
Did you see any particular impact on your students when they got to see their work in this show?
“The Chatham Artists Guild December student show is an opportunity to share with the Chatham County community all the creative work going on everyday in Chatham County Schools visual arts classrooms,” says Sharon Allen, Lead Arts Teacher for Chatham County Schools. She couldn’t be more proud of the students, the teachers, or this longtime collaboration between CCS and the Chatham Artists Guild. She notes that it’s remarkable to have a producing partner like the Guild to handle the logistics and cost of the venue and the reception.
We caught co-producer Louise Hobbs of the Chatham Artists Guild on the phone, and she was able to give us a sneak peek behind the scenes of this gem. Louise first took part in the show in 1998, as an art teacher in Chatham County Schools. Like many happenings that spring up in a grassroots kind of way, the exact launch date is fuzzy, but the sense of history is strong–with local artists including Cathy Holt, Vidabeth Benson, and Maggie Zwilling integral to the earliest years.
At this point, the Guild’s educational programming has grown to include strong mentorship programs, as well as speaking life as a visual artist at art clubs in local schools. But the Student Showcase remains the foundation of the Guild’s arts-in-education work.
The Guild takes on a producer role for the Student Showcase, with Louise and artists Mike Stano, Kristen Bergsten, Gina Harrison, and Leslie Palmer handling the funding, the logistics, the reception, and the publicity–while the county’s art teachers selected student work, matted the art, and hung it for the exhibition.
For many years, the show was only up for week. Now that the Chatham Mills hosts the show, it runs for a full month. With that length of exhibition, Louise says, “One thing that happens is that it’s such a community meeting place . . . it’s a crossroads for the community. I see the mayor and all kinds of people come through. I guess they park behind Chatham Mills, and then they walk through the hallways going to the Marketplace or to The Sycamore.” She adds, “Greg and Maria Lewis of The Sycamore really deserve a word of praise, and so does Tom Roberts [of Chatham Mills]. Greg and Maria have been fabulous with the reception. And Tom Roberts put in a lot of additional lighting this year in the hallways, so it’s much better for the students’ art.
At the end of our call, Louise shares a particular delight for her in this year’s exhibition: “I love seeing all the self-portraits because it’s like seeing the children. And figure studies. Figure studies of different kinds put me in touch with seeing how the child interprets the human figure, and the human figure is challenging. Seeing different expressions of that, I really enjoy.”
Chatham Grove’s Ms. Sylvestre says she’s certain “your spirit will be uplifted” by spending a few minutes with these students’ artwork. After planning to stop by for 10 minutes and leaving after almost 45 minutes–soaking in the ways children and teenagers reflect life back to us in their art–we agree. If you want a smile over these holiday weeks, go see this!
- Who: Chatham County Schools and Chatham Artists Guild
- What: K-12 Student Visual Art Show
- When: Through January 2
- Where: Chatham Mills at 480 Hillsboro Street
- Why: Because it’s a quick way to get your arts fix and a little jolt of joy
- How: Head over to the Chatham Mill and find the hallway between the Marketplace and The Sycamore.
- Cost: Free
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