In a Class by Themselves

The kindergartners came out of the double doors like flying pieces of popcorn. The first-graders with their superior experience and dignity came out like vestrymen, bent on a solemn task. They had all been in the same place--at the Valentine School Art Show.

This was the windup of a year’s work in art, put together by the PTA at Valentine School, a public school in San Marino. This was the second year of the Art Festival, and it was a roaring success, especially with the young artists, who ranged from kindergarten to the fifth grade.

Last year, Cindy Roe, whose son Trevor was a first-grader at Valentine, and some other mothers decided that the kids needed to learn something about art. “Art is not caught. It must be taught” became their rallying slogan. Because of school budget cuts that came from Sacramento, things thought of as frill courses had been eliminated. Roe and her co-chairwoman, Susie Bishop, determined that they would teach the kids something about art.

Roe was an art history major at UCLA, and she was delighted to be able to do something with her knowledge that would enrich the kids. Roe and Bishop and 48 PTA volunteers gave hundreds of hours of work to the classes.

Each grade studies one facet of art at a time.

In kindergarten, the children studied line, looking at pictures by Klee, Picasso, Miro and Mondrian. Then they painted their own pictures.

The first grade studied shape, real and abstract, illustrated by the works of Rousseau, Cezanne and Matisse.

In second grade, the subject was color, and how it changes the way we feel about a picture. The children were exposed to the works of Joshua Reynolds, Mary Cassatt, Mark Rothko, Georges Seurat and Gainsborough. The kids loved it more with every lesson.

The third grade studied texture, both visual and tactile. There were lovely, knobby pictures, and satin smooth ones inspired by Van Gogh, Jackson Pollock, Monet, Rembrandt and the Cluny tapestries.

Fourth-graders studied form in sculpture and architecture. Roe said these classes were held out on the lawn, the biggest rather organized exercise in mud pie making in the land. And they learned about Michelangelo and Rodin.

The fifth-graders combined all of the elements of art in their work and learned about Gilbert Stuart, Andrew Wyeth, Edward Hopper and Severin Roesen.

At the exhibit I met the school principal, an easy, charming lady named Mary Meye. She managed all year to keep the art display room off limits. Even on rainy days, when the classes usually have gym and recess inside, Meye saved the space for the art work and classes. To give a clear idea of how the lady thinks: Every room in the school has a large printed sign reading, “I will respect myself and others.” Good tenet.

Roe told me that the kids’ excitement level stayed at the explosion point all year. Seeing what was on the wall by another class, they’d ask, “When do we get to do that?” They waited for class every week on the door sill and had to be scooted out when class was over.

At the end of the year, every child in school had at least one picture in the exhibition. The volunteers took the works home and mounted them on bright construction paper. Cindy Roe’s husband, Richard, was willingly dragooned into putting up corkboard to display the pictures. He tricked up the entrance to the exhibit with stanchions and bright white chains and plywood painted like a Grecian portico with columns and an imposing lintel, and set the corkboards at angles to give the feeling of corridors. This made the kids feel as if they were going into a real art museum.

The exhibit opened with an evening reception for the artists. Roe also conjured up a money-raising fillip for the exhibit. She had packets of note paper printed, each one with a picture made by a young artist. One is after Georges Seurat--pointillism by a second-grader of a man in a tall Sunday afternoon hat, standing against a dappled grassy bank under a blue sky and holding a lovely mandarin orange umbrella. Another card was done after the kids had seen Cezanne’s “Tulips in the Vase.” The third card was inspired by a Picasso of a hand holding a bunch of flowers. The fourth picture is a lovely, misty iris done in watercolor.

Another Roe-Bishop production is an apron of heavy muslin with a strap around the neck. It is bright white, wildly speckled and sprayed. It was inspired the day the kids encountered Jackson Pollock. Across the top of the apron, it says, “You’ve got to have art.”

This is not the first time parents have pitched in at the school. Two years ago, the parents painted the outside of Valentine School from top to bottom in a testimonial to their determination that their children would not be shortchanged. They won’t, as long as Roe and Bishop and their 48 compatriots are convinced that you’ve got to have art.