May 9, 2016 3 min read

ROGERSVILLE – Nearly every wall of West Greene’s new elementary school will be filled with art tonight.

This first exhibit for kids in kindergarten through sixth grade will be from 5 to 6 p.m. today and is a colorful opening act to the elementary school’s spring concert that starts at 6 p.m. in the high school auditorium next door.

There is a reception with refreshments in the art room and teacher Adrienne Day will be there to explain how post-impressionist artist Henri Matisse made it to West Greene to become the inspiration for the show.

“Matisse created hundreds of paintings and many were still-life images, alive with beautiful patterns and bold colors,” Day said.

Throughout the year, her students have been studying the artist and his work while learning to do some colorful work themselves. First- and second-graders looked at a range of still-life paintings, then got hands-on with tints of acrylic paint and charcoal to shade the fruit they drew. Third-graders studied his goldfish and then used layers of mixed media to create images. Older students looked at his famous paper cutouts and worked with paper to build bright collages.

The end result is art with plenty of color and design, a major part of the show.

Kindergarteners have their own special projects on display – hand-colored castles collaged with oil pastel trimmings, photos of themselves bedecked as kings, queens and dashing knights, each with a story to tell.

But the highlight of the exhibit is the art produced by Pioneer P.O.P. (print-making outreach program) that Day brought into the classroom to teach what was once considered the college-level skills of print making to her sixth graders. Day was inspired by a former teacher Lloyd Scott of California University of Pennsylvania, who offers a lending library of non-toxic printmaking supplies, equipment and instruction to area art teachers.

Many public school teachers lack the training and equipment, so Lloyd started this program to get the art form back into local school districts, Day said. After attending Lloyd’s workshop at the 2014 Pennsylvania Art Education Association conference, Lloyd helped Day write a proposal to bring printmaking to her classroom as part of sixth grade curriculum. Day was awarded a $7,700 Sprout Grant in 2015 and used it to add printmaking supplies and equipment to her new classroom.

It also funded extra art programming through the Andy Warhol Museum and the Cal U artist in residence program.

The P.O.P. Projects curriculum used intaglio, relief printing, mono prints and screen-printing to teach sixth graders something about themselves and their school identity.

“Who are we as a person? As a school? As a community?” Day asked her students and they responded with art.

Lloyd came to instruct a session on surface patterns, a college level class. This first art show celebrates the accomplishments of the entire school together for the first time, Day said.

“Our kids did a wonderful job combining right and left brain talents in order to create repetitive, joining patterns,” Day said. “This is a tradition I will continue as long as I teach here.”