Teaching

Here is a cool thing to do- if there are people who will coordinate , spend some time and want to enrich some lives - including their own.

Almost thirty art students from first to sixth grade achieved something last week that many adults never experience. Their original artwork was on exhibit from Thursday through Sunday at The Gallery at Spicewood, right alongside the work of well-known fine painters and artisans including gallery owners Joe and Sherry Verdoorn, Texas artist Gordon Fowler, and others.

Their school's spring art project, directed by teacher Bob Jones, introduced these Tierra Vista Montessori School girls and boys to the creative processes of four basic projects: painting a landscape, exploring geometric abstraction, creating a floral pattern as decorative as they could imagine, and using found materials and tissue paper to create a richly textured collage.

Jones explained, "...the students were encouraged to explore and go their own direction - the results are quite varied and as unique as each individual. I am impressed by what some guidance and the willingness and freedom to explore can create."

During classes the students created about 125 pieces of art. And after all, as Jones said, Art like Life, is about discovering. Jones selected the work to be shown, from all four basic projects. All the artwork was the same size, matted and framed identically except for the use of varied primary colors. The uniformly large size of each piece seemed to encourage bold, imaginative results, and to give the students' art equal status on the gallery's walls as the work of established professionals.

In addition to patrons seeing exhibits of their own art students' work, Tierra Vista benefited from a four-day silent auction of pieces by fine artists in many media. Parent and organizer Kate Dearborn said a preliminary tally showed the auction raised about $2,000 to benefit the school.

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