For the next five weeks, the Janice Mason Art Museum in Cadiz will be showcasing the hard work and development of art students from Trigg County Schools — an effort that began last Friday afternoon with the revealing of kindergarten through fifth grade pieces.
According to art teachers Chelsey Allen Redd and Dani Knight, more than 700 students have rolled through their classrooms since August 2022, and it took two full days — with middle-school student assistance — to create the displays.
The creations range in medium and skill: crayon, pencil, ink, Model Magic, still life, relief, black and white and vibrant color.
Redd said the “keeping of art” typically begins in late October each school year, and students can keep working to improve them until mid-Spring.
She called it the “rough beginnings” of one’s art portfolio, which over time advances through practice and learned concepts.
While Redd gets students up until the fourth grade, Knight shepherds them through fifth grade and onward — taking talents and applying new challenges to create new, graduated skills.
Prior to COVID-19, Trigg County students often had art once a week — in what was a rotation of secondary-learning opportunities.
In a post-COVID world, where contact tracing is necessary, art classes have gone from once a week to a week-long rotation — which Redd and Knight note actually has key perks.
Among them: lesson plans can be extended through the week, more difficult concepts can be explored and students can push themselves while being closely associated with a consistent teacher presence.
What’s more: Knight and Redd both rotate their classrooms so they aren’t teaching everyone the same thing each day.
The negative, they said, is that students probably don’t want to wait on rotations for things like physical education, but even then there’s a benefit to spending a week on a specific sport, musical implement or other educational tangent.
Knight also said there are instances in which she’s only seen a kid two or three weeks in the rotation before it’s time for the spring art show, which brings its own challenges when there might need to be some auditing and editing.
The primary and intermediate exhibit is up until April 27, with the middle and high schools running from April 28 until May 18 — just one week before graduation.
