An Idea Using Art

We’re putting on an art show at school this week. It’s our first. We actually borrowed the idea from a day care, but we have enhanced the idea so it has become our own.

Children’s art is really wonderful. My own home is decorated with my children’s art from Newburgh Elementary School. I framed their paintings over the twenty-one years I had children enrolled there, and the paintings and drawings hang all over the house.

There is so much to see in a child’s painting; it says a lot about where a child is and what he is currently about.

At the little school I own with Edith St. Louis - the best partner ever - The Garden School, we collected a lot of the children’s work over the last several months and held it back from going home. Then on a few Sundays, teachers met to mat, frame and display what we collected.

Matting children’s work is fun. We bought dozens of frames at the “cheapy” stores and took out the glass and the mat. Using one or the other, we moved the mat or frame across the picture until we saw something that looked really nice. Sometimes only a part of a child’s picture was used, and sometimes we used the whole thing.

Each child has at least three works of art for his parents and grandparents to view and to buy. Sometimes we cut out their work and mounted it in a shadow box or with another item that made it especially nice.

There is not a single work of art that is not beautiful and truly worth a prominent place in a living room or dining room. We hope the parents will love it as much as we have.

On Friday, we will have the showing from 2:00 to 4:00. Refreshments will be served. The show will help offset the increase in gas prices that inhibit our little school from going as many places this summer as we usually do. We travel as far as Tennessee in the summer, and this year we are planning to go to Missouri. The kids love it, so the extra money from the art show will help.

Framing children’s art is a really nice way of keeping special focus on ages and stages. It makes a home belong to the children as much as it belongs to the adults.

I am always upset when I find that a parent has thrown a child’s work out on his or her way out the door. I sometimes find really nice work in the dumpsters, and I wonder if parents understand that these years will not come again. Not all work is savable, but not all of a child’s work should be dumped.

After thirty years, all four of my children can return home and remember their youths with their art hanging on the walls. I know how much they appreciate being around memories while they are building their own. Keep a portion of your child’s work and make it special. You will be glad you did.

The public is invited to the art show. So if you are reading this, and you’d like to see it, come by.