Throughout the 2022-23 school year, Seymour Community School Corp. and St. Ambrose Catholic School students have created a variety of artwork.
Two- and three-dimensional art, textiles, sewing, papier mâché, clay and other types of projects have been completed.
After each project, the art teachers and teaching assistants set some aside for the annual district art show. Recently, they matted and tagged them so the artist, school and grade can be seen by people at the show.
The 35th edition of the show — which hasn’t happened in recent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic — is from noon to 6 p.m. Saturday in the newly remodeled gymnasium at the Seymour Middle School Sixth Grade Center, 1000 S. Poplar St., Seymour.
It’s free and open to the public.
“The children just work so hard all year long, and some of them, this is really their outlet,” Betsy Bryant said when asked why the time was right to bring the show back. Bryant is the art teacher at Emerson and Cortland elementary schools and director of elementary art for SCSC.
“Some of them are good at sports or academics, and this just hits a whole range of children,” she said. “There are some that really thrive when you are doing art, and we just want to showcase their hard work. All of the teachers have worked really hard, as well. It’s really exciting.”
Along with more than 1,000 pieces of art on display, the show will include Seymour High School art students volunteering their time to do face painting, refreshments provided by Tri Kappa sorority and an opportunity to make origami.
“I told the kids, I said, ‘It’s kind of like getting to go to an art museum for free,’” Bryant said. “With living in Seymour, they don’t have the opportunity to visit museums and stuff as often if their parents don’t take them to things like that, so I said, ‘Even if you don’t have work, it’s going to be something to see.’”
The show will feature artwork by students from kindergarten through 12th grade created in art class.
“We do projects all year long, and then after each project, we pick just a few that we think (would be good for the art show), and then we hang onto those until the art show and then they’ll get them back afterwards,” Bryant said.
From Emerson alone, she said there are 374 pieces of art, so adding in all of the other Seymour schools and St. Ambrose, there will be plenty to view at the show.
“Especially from elementary, most of it will be 2-D, but we will have this 3-D art — bird nests, snowmen, caterpillars,” Bryant said. “High school and middle school, they do more. They may have textiles or papier mâché, different things like that.”
Bryant had fifth-graders weave pot holders that will be on display at the show, too.
“I’m going to put some of those out so the parents can see, and then the fifth-graders are going to give those to their mothers for Mother’s Day,” she said.
Emerson second-graders Landon Hubers and Lucy Combs-Smith are among the students who will have art on display at the show.
That will include a giraffe they made by wetting a piece of paper, sticking tissue paper on it and painting over it, a technique referred to as bleeding tissue paper. There also will be a flower and a chameleon they drew using oil pastel.
The chameleon was part of an Art to Remember fundraiser, where parents could order artwork created by their child and have it put on a coffee mug, a Christmas ornament, a blanket or another item and the money raised went back to the school’s art department to buy supplies to use in class.
Hubers and Combs-Smith both said their parents ordered ornaments to put on their family’s Christmas tree.
“I liked it when we got to use the oil pastels. It was fun, and also, they are like oil with paint,” Hubers said.
“I liked the flower because I really like painting flowers and using oil pastels to paint,” Combs-Smith said.
Both kids said they get a lot out of art.
“It’s fun, and we get to do lots of fun stuff and we create artwork,” Hubers said.
“It’s relaxing just to sit down and start drawing,” Combs-Smith said.
They think it’s pretty neat their artwork and other Seymour students’ art will be on display for the public to see Saturday.
“It’s cool that everybody gets to see our artwork, and we might see our artwork,” Hubers said.
“I think it’s cool because you just get to show everybody what you can do,” Combs-Smith said.
The show is being advertised with a flyer created by Seymour Middle School student Cali Fox, and it has been distributed and posted around the schools and on social media. She’s a former student of Bryant’s at Cortland.
In Bryant’s classroom, she has artwork she has collected from students over the years, including some made by her own children. Several of the pieces were done at home after the students had learned a certain technique in Bryant’s class, and they brought them to her.
“This is going to be something your parents are going to really appreciate and love,” Bryant said of what she tells her students about art.
She also tells them art is something they can do for the rest of their life if they want to, either as a career, as a hobby or just for fun.
“It’s a creative outlet for all ages,” she said. “It’s trending right now as a good outlet for adults and everybody.”
Bryant said all of the students are proud of their artwork, and she’s proud of the work they put in to make the annual district show possible.
She’s also thankful for the teachers and teaching assistants who lead the art projects year-round and help her prepare for the big art show.
“It’s a process, and the other girls, they have 700 kids at those big schools, and they’ve worked hard. I’m really proud of them,” Bryant said. “They have their heart and soul in it, and they’ve done a fantastic job. I’m so pleased with all of them.”