Howard County Hosts Spring Youth Art Exhibit 3/13

March is Youth Art Month.  Through an ongoing partnership between the Howard County Public School System and the Howard County Arts Council, the annual spring exhibit of student artwork opens on March 13 at the Howard County Center for the Arts in Ellicott City.  This year’s Youth Art Month exhibit titled Identity, features about 430 works by students grades K-12 and is on view in Gallery I.  In Gallery II, work by Howard County Art Faculty is on display in Artist as Teacher: HCPSS Faculty Show.  Both exhibits will be open from March 13 to April 24, 2009.  A free public reception including, beverages and snacks, and a 2009 Visual and Performing Arts Summer Camp Preview, will be held on Friday, March 27, from 5-7 pm.

The student works featured in Identity range from a 3-foot wide cheeseburger to photographs, drawings and wire sculptures.  Students worked individually and in groups utilizing acrylic paints, pencil and charcoal as well as paper, fabric and mixed media. Students were encouraged to define their identity based on a ‘sense of self, a sense of place and/or a sense of community’, creating a very dynamic show.

Artist as Teacher: HCPSS Faculty Show features work by Howard County faculty including A.R. Cohen, Heidi Praff, Cheryl Teter and Zachary Titford.  Cohen’s multi-panel oil depictions of individuals are studies originally meant to be used for sculpture, and portray the subject with life-like accuracy.  Heidi Praff, Studio Art teacher at Centennial High School and HCCA Resident Artist, depicts interiors in her pieces using geometric lines and shapes to define her spaces. The warm colors and the varied texture in Atholton High School art teacher Zachary Titford’s paintings set the tone for each of his pieces. Cheryl Teter, an art teacher at West Friendship Elementary School , summons form and movement from the seemingly rigid steel and old tool shapes from which her animal sculptures are made.

At the exhibit reception on March 27, the Howard County Arts Council will present a 2009 Summer Arts Camp Preview . A sampling of Summer Camp teachers will be on-hand leading example activities. Participants will get to create original puppets, mandala poems and sun-catchers and there will be sample projects from previous years of camp. Staff will be on-site to accept summer camp registrations. HCAC Summer Camp runs June through August 2009 and has visual and performing arts classes for students in grades K-8 (entering Fall 2009).

Gallery hours are Monday through Friday 10AM - 8PM, Saturday 10AM - 4PM, and Sunday 12 - 4PM.  The Center is closed Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009. To learn more about HCCA programs and exhibits, call 410-313-ARTS (2787) or visit www.hocoarts.org.

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