Inspiring Minds Want to Know : 4 Exhibits Celebrate Imagination of Young Artists as Part of Orange County Festival

They’re stacked on the floors. They’re stacked on folding chairs. A few are even where you’d expect them to be stacked--on tables.

Six thousand pieces of art. And not one hanging on a wall.

Off-duty teachers, art specialists and coordinators are busy sorting and bagging, others follow judges around and around and around the rooms, putting up art before them and taking it down when they’ve passed. The six judges--two sets of three, one set for grades K through 6, the other for secondary-level entries--are deciding which works will be displayed in the Imagination Celebration Gallery, which encompasses sites in four cities.

How do they process 6,000 pieces of art in a day?

“We walk miles,” said adjudicator Sherry Swan, one of 40 volunteers who gathered at the Garden Grove Unified School District offices in March to organize the four juried art shows of the Imagination Celebration, the countywide festival that begins Saturday. To keep the process as impartial as possible, art-knowledgeable judges are drawn from three groups: retirees, non-Orange County residents and student art teachers.

There were even camera-toting spectators on hand.

“My palms are sweaty,” said Patricia Woods, a Garden Grove kindergarten teacher. “I learn so much from seeing what the other students are doing, and I like to listen to what the judges are [saying]. Are they liking gestures? Are they liking the colors? Are they liking technique? Are they liking the subject?

In short, she asked in a conspiratorial whisper, “what do they like?”

All of the above. What they found in this year’s entries, according to Julia Poirier of the Downey Unified School District, was more originality. “There seems to be more of the students’ own work coming through, their own thoughts, rather than copy work from a photograph or something else. It all just seems to be fresher.”

Organizers themselves are unsure when the competition began, but they agree it is at least 35 years old, considerably older than the Imagination Celebration, which started in Orange County in 1986.

Four free exhibits make up the Imagination Celebration Gallery:

* “1,000 Pieces of Art” at Crystal Court in Costa Mesa, through May 5. Two-dimensional art. (The 10 best works selected from each grade level--130 in all--will go on to be displayed at the Junior Art Gallery at the Laguna Beach Festival of Arts this summer.)

* Photography at Huntington Beach Art Center, through May 5. Black-and-white and color photos.

* Three-dimensional art at Irvine Fine Arts Center, through May 19. Sculpture, jewelry, pottery, metalwork and more.

* All-District Art Exhibit at the Laguna Hills Mall, through May 5. Two-dimensional art.

The all-district show, which includes about 600 artworks, is new this year and consists of works not selected for the Crystal Court show.

“The large districts like Garden Grove and Irvine have coordinated art activities,” explained Bernard Jones, fine-arts coordinator for the Garden Grove schools. “We have mentors, we have specialists. Irvine has traveling art teachers. It’s very difficult for the other districts to compete against that quality.

“What we’re doing is making it an even playing field for the entire county, reaching out to those schools and those districts that don’t have specialists, that don’t have art teachers or coordinators,” Jones said. “All districts and all private schools will be accounted for. We’re making sure that their efforts don’t go in vain.”

For a schedule of Imagination Celebration events, please see page F19.