Works by CCS Students Featured in Exhibition
By ERIC SANTOMAURO-STENZEL
COOPERSTOWN
From April 24 until this Friday, the area’s youngest and teenage artists have a gallery space of their own at the Cooperstown Art Association Galleries. Featuring students from Cooperstown Elementary School and the Junior-Senior High School, students have their creativity and talent on display. Admission is free of charge.
Starting in 1995, said CAAG Executive Director Janet Erway, students have filled the walls and floor space with their designs. “It’s a show that I always truly look forward to. There’s just so much energy in their work.”
Around 2013, the exhibition began incorporating middle-schoolers, and by 2017, the elementary school, Erway said. Art and Music Night, the kickoff event for the exhibition, used to be held at the elementary school, “but because of the popularity of the exhibit here and the amount of work the teachers are putting into getting the artwork here, they said, why don’t we just expand it into K through 12 and have it here?”
This year’s exhibit, overseen by elementary art teacher Alyssa Ketcham and junior-senior art teacher Carlylia Muller, arranged by the high-schoolers, includes myriad artistic expressions. Drawings by elementary schoolers greet visitors as they round the staircase, giving way to the brightly lit exhibition space. Paintings, collages, and sculptures fill the walls and corners, with additional boards with art standing in the room. Not all of it is so bright, though: parting a curtain beneath a black canopy reveals a glow-in-the-dark exhibit.
“That’s something that’s pretty exciting for the students, to put together artworks that will glow under the UV light,” Ketcham said. Outside the tent, older students “get their own wall showcasing what they’ve been working on over the course of several years, which is pretty nice.”
The elementary art is more guided by assignment, whereas older students with more experience are given more flexibility. The art draws on a wide array of themes.
“We go through learning about different artists from different times through art history and through different countries,” Ketcham said of her elementary schoolers. Older students “may be learning a new technique or learning about a new artist,” and bring “quite a bit of voice” to their work, “everything from animal combinations to political opinion. It’s all out there.”
In addition to promoting students’ self-expression and making connections with global art and people, Ketcham said, “it’s a really amazing chance to get into their own community, to see what’s out there, to welcome the community into seeing what’s happening within the district.”
The upcoming CAAG calendar includes “Leatherstocking Brush & Palette Club” from May 16 to June 17; “Essential Art” from May 16 to June 25; and a solo exhibit by Emily Falco from May 16 to June 25. The CAAG, located at 22 Main Street, Cooperstown, is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
