RSCD Art Exhibition showcases extraordinary range of student talent

Posted by [email protected] | Sep 25, 2015 | Education | 0 |

Cubism Drawing by Bijaya Mahat, Vanguard Collegiate High School, Studio Art

NOTE: THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN THE DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE. SEE ALL D & C ARTICLES.

• March 10, 2014

As I travel throughout the District, art classes are often my favorite destinations. This year alone I have helped and watched students make Egyptian Sarcophagus with Hieroglyphics at Dr. Walter Cooper Academy, at Enrico Fermi street art cartoons inspired by Rochester’s Wall Therapy, papier-mâché piñata’s in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month at Franklin, and Australian aboriginal X-Ray and Dream drawings at the Nathaniel Rochester Community School. Always I am much impressed.

So will you be — guaranteed — if you visit the annual RCSD Arts Showcase Exhibition at 131 West Broad Street running through March (the opening was on the 4th). More than 60 Arts Educators have gathered their students’ work from Kindergarten to 12th grade. Taken from a wide variety of mediums and techniques, such as drawing, painting, pastel, watercolor, ceramic, sculpture, and photography, the art represents both the undeniable passion of its creators and the dedication of their teachers.

I asked co-curator Regina Neri, who teaches at Dr. Walter Cooper, The Children’s School, and is the Managing Artist for Cypher After School Art, why art is so vital:

I believe that an Arts Education is one of the most important parts of a child’s education. Our students are most successful when they are given the opportunity to learn in many different ways. Art gives students the chance to continue their classroom learning in visual and cultural ways. Through collaboration, art teachers can provide students with different ways of understanding their classroom material visually.

Furthermore, Neri explains how art classes advance one of the fundamental missions of public education:

Personally, I believe that art education is important in my schools because it helps to equalize my students. Regardless of educational needs or language barriers when my students walk into the Art room they automatically become equal. Art class allows all learning levels to feel successful. Even if you are new to the country with little understanding of English you can still be successful visually in Art class.

From such a perspective, art can be vehicle of democracy.

For more on the 2013 Exhibition:

https://talkerofthetown.com/2015/09/24/43/

About The Author

[email protected]

Welcome to Talker of the Town! My name is David Kramer. I have a Ph.D in English and teach at Keuka College. I am a former and still active Fellow at the Nazareth College Center for Public History and a Storyteller in Residence at the SmallMatters Institute. Over the years, I have taught at Monroe Community College, the Rochester Institute of Technology and St. John Fisher College. I have published numerous Guest Essays, Letters, Book Reviews and Opinion pieces in The New York Times, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Buffalo News, the Rochester Patriot, the Providence Journal, the Providence Business News, the Brown Alumni Magazine, the New London Day, the Boston Herald, the Messenger Post Newspapers, the Wedge, the Empty Closet, the CITY, Lake Affect Magazine and Brighton Connections. My poetry appears in The Criterion: An International Journal in English and Rundenalia and my academic writing in War, Literature and the Arts and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. Starting in February 2013, I wrote for three Democratic and Chronicle blogs, "Make City Schools Better," "Unite Rochester," and the "Editorial Board." When my tenure at the D & C ended, I wanted to continue conversations first begun there. And start new ones. So we created this new space, Talker of the Town, where all are invited to join. I don’t like to say these posts are “mine.” Very few of them are the sole product of my sometimes overheated imagination. Instead, I call them partnerships and collaborations. Or as they say in education, “peer group work.” Talker of the Town might better be Talkers of the Town. The blog won’t thrive without your leads, text, pictures, ideas, facebook shares, tweets, comments and criticisms.