Painting a Positive Portrait : Youth: Kids’ entries for annual Pacoima Pride arts project refute negative images of their community.

For most of their young lives, Pacoima schoolchildren have seen their community portrayed in stereotypes: streets teeming with violence, rampant drug activity, despair.

But according to the nearly 2,000 children who depicted their community for the fourth annual Pacoima Pride arts project judged in Pacoima and Sherman Oaks Monday, the stereotypes tell only part of the story.

In brilliant markers, watercolors and crayons, the children’s artwork tells of a Pacoima replete with smiling suns, grassy hills and families holding hands. “I am proud of me and my family because we work so hard” is the message scrawled on one. “People in Pacoima live together and share things,” says another.

The annual contest is sponsored by TransWorld Bank, which opened its doors in Pacoima in 1941 and is now the only bank there. This year, organizers invited children from four Pacoima elementary schools to interpret the contest theme: family and community pride.

On Monday, five judges chose first- and second-place winners from each grade at Haddon Avenue Elementary School, Pacoima Elementary School, the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center and Mary Immaculate School.

Manuel Velasquez, a muralist and counselor for Community Youth Gang Services who helps judge the contest every year, said he was struck by the overwhelming number of positive images this time.

“Children know the stereotype of Pacoima,” Velasquez said. “They also know the positive and the good. They just don’t have the opportunity to express it very often.” On Monday, the judges traveled to each of the schools, where rows of colorful drawings and paintings of houses, parks, neighborhoods and families hung in hallways or auditoriums. They narrowed the entries to about 100 and took them from the schools for final judging at TransWorld headquarters in Sherman Oaks. There, in a basement training room, organizers hung the winning art on walls, doors and chalkboards. Judges circled the room in silence, studying the artwork and taking notes as if appraising great masterpieces.

“You learn a lot from children,” said Cecilia Aguilera, who is Mayor Richard Riordan’s East Valley representative. “They tend to be positive and not disillusioned. They only see solutions.”

The bank will host an awards dinner for the winners and their families in mid-April at the bank’s Pacoima branch, where the art will first be displayed. First-place winners will receive $100 savings bonds. In June, the winners will travel by bus to Downtown Los Angeles, where their work will be presented to the City Council and displayed at the Children’s Museum.