Sonoma Valley Museum of Art shows local kids' artwork online

Many children never even get to visit a museum, let alone dream of showing their own art there, but for the past 20 years, the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art has made that dream come true.

Every year, the A.R.T.S. (Art Rewards the Student) program sends art teachers to fourth and fifth grade classes at Sonoma Valley schools, and at the end of the school year, students can see their work exhibited at the museum on Broadway in downtown Sonoma. This year’s exhibit originally was scheduled for March 18 through April 5.

Except this year, with so many places closed - including schools and museums - as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and the statewide shelter-in-place order, the A.R.T.S. show has moved online, like so many other annual events. See it at svma.org. It will be expanded and continue indefinitely as art is sent in from the various schools.

That doesn’t diminish the sheer vitality of new artwork by some 700 students from seven schools. It shows in their faces, reflected in scores of vibrant self-portraits the students created.

“The teachers and kids are pleased to see their work online, because they were disappointed when we had to cancel the exhibition,” said Debbie Barker, director of development and marketing for the museum.

“The kids had begun by visiting the museum in January and February. You can see in their art what the students saw at the museum and then interpreted in a way that had meaning for them in their lives.”

What the students saw on their visits to the museum, before the virus shutdown closed the doors, were pop art portraits by Valentin Popov and a multi-?media installation by Judy O’Shea.

The students translated what they saw into their new work in a variety of ways, including full-face portraits of themselves and their friends and families, as well as floating paper clouds and mock jellyfish, working in clay and other media.

“You really get some meaning from these faces,” Barker said of the portraits. “Some of the portraits the students made of themselves and some are of the people around them, but they did much more beyond just faces. Teachers worked with them in different ways. They made jolly jellyfish, lizards and butterflies.”

As the program’s name says, the students found it rewarding.

“I thought drawing a face would be so easy and it was really a lot harder than I thought. It was really challenging and fun,” one student told the organizers.

The Sonoma Valley Museum of Art started the A.R.T.S. program in 2000 to compensate for gaps in traditional school arts education programs, which tend to be stronger in the early grades and in high school than in the fourth and fifth grades, said Margie Maynard, the museum’s deputy director of engagement and exhibitions.

“The museum is part of the community effort to ensure there is art education in the schools. Because there are those two years when art is not emphasized as strongly in the schools, it’s a critical time, so the museum fills that need,” Maynard said.

“We can expose the students to living, working artists whose work is being shown in the museum,” she explained.

“At the end of the program, the students could come to the museum and see their work shown alongside work by the artists. There is this big circle of connection.”

Even though the students can’t come to the museum this time around, the circle isn’t broken.

“This program is something we can build upon,” Barker said.

“Even in this time when the kids are home, they have been able to use skills they learned in the A.R.T.S. program.”

You can reach Staff Writer Dan Taylor at dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com.