For more than seven decades, the Parrish Art Museum has been welcoming students to display their art in a spring exhibition that shows off some of the most creative pieces eastern Long Island has to offer. This year, the 73rd Student Art Exhibition kicked off on Saturday. Works from more than 1,000 students, some as young as 3, will be on view through April 26, centered on the themes of regeneration and America’s 250th birthday.
“Regeneration is all about celebrating the history of local ecology and environmental art that happens on the East End,” said Nathan Malak, the education programs manager at the Parrish. “So you’ll see a lot of these artworks are somehow related to the environment, trying to be more sustainable and reduce, reuse, recycle, and also celebrate life on the East End.”
The museum blocks off about half of its exhibition space for the students’ art, dedicating Gallery One to group projects from elementary and middle school artists. Galleries Two and Three display individual projects from high schoolers. The spine of the museum — in between all three of the galleries — hosts art from Access Parrish, a program in its 10th year, designed to improve access to the arts and museums.
In total, about 50 schools on the East End participate in the exhibition. Hayground, a private school in Bridgehampton founded 30 years ago with a focus on creativity, has a prime spot in Gallery One. “We started considering this show as early as September,” said Perry Burns, a Hayground art teacher. “My co-teacher Sabra Elliot and I decided on the theme of masks because we thought it would be interesting to study the culture and history of masks all over the world. Then the kids started to explore different materials, from traditional things like clay or plaster to nontraditional things like Legos, beads, and paintbrushes. We really encourage them to go in any direction they want.”
Eight-year-old Valentine Cavin had a great time making his mask. “I just made it look crazy. My favorite color is blue and I like polka dots,” he said. His grandmother Laura Zeidenstein was so proud of his self-expression. “It’s fantastic. He comes from a family of artists, so we’re just so amazed with him. It’s very professional. He goes to an amazing school [Hayground] that really prioritizes art and creativity.”
Ryan Fargione, who teaches art at the Amagansett School, helped students in kindergarten through third grade make a project called Bits & Pieces, which uses modular tiles on baseplates to recreate common images. “I made an octopus, ‘cause when we were in art there were these drawings that we had to copy and we got to pick which one to do,” explained Addison Schlitt, 6. “I like the octopus because it has a purple background.” Her friend Marla Martin, also 6, went with an ice cream cone. “I made ice cream because I love ice cream. Vanilla is my favorite.”
Sag Harbor Elementary created a beach scene with birds, horseshoe crabs, and fish. Five-year-old Clyde Hogan made one of the crabs. “I made a horseshoe crab with an egg carton and painted it brown,” she said, in awe of all of the art in Gallery One. “It reminds me of fairyland.” Her mom, Elise Jordan, was quick to credit the teachers. “It’s such impressive work from little kids. I can’t believe our minis made this. It’s just gorgeous.”
“It’s a wonderful space and a wonderful place for the community to come together,” she added. “The teachers spent so much time with them, teaching them all these different mediums and using all of these different things that we normally would discard. I really admire the effort that went into it, but also into showing them how to save the environment.”
Christina Graham, an art teacher at Ross Lower School, also took an ecological approach. “We read a book called “When a Tree Falls: Nurse Logs and Their Incredible Forest Power,” by Kirsten Pendreigh, and that gave us some context for the subject matter. And then Nursery and pre-K did the [Crayola] Model Magic green plants and the rocks you see around the flowers. Kindergarten did the moss, out of yarn. First grade did the lichen out of handmade paper, and the bark made out of handmade paper, and that’s recycled construction paper from September to now, which they color-coded and ripped and blended up. So that was really fun.”
“Second grade did the Model Magic bugs and the red and yellow and orange leaves, and they made paper and cut them out, which was a multi-day project. Third grade did the Model Magic mushrooms. Fourth grade did the ceramic animals. We did reptiles and amphibians that were local to the South Fork, and birds. And fifth grade did this incredible tree trunk structure. And then they really led the layout of the whole thing to put it all together.”
Yuna Ahn, a Ross second-grader, worked on the Model Magic bugs. “I made a centipede and a little bug on a tree that fell down. It made lots of homes for the animals.” Her mother, Cleo Ahn, loved that Ms. Graham let the kids take the lead. “It’s all the kids doing it and she just helps guide them,” Ms. Ahn said. “We look forward to this all year, it’s absolutely spectacular. The creativity these children have is just amazing.”
The high school students exhibited individual projects in Galleries Two and Three, where the jar sketches by students at Westhampton Beach High School stood out. “We did jar projects and we colored them with colored pencils. They were really tedious. There’s a lot of detail in them,” Mia Brown, an 11th grader, said. Andrew Lewis, another junior, agreed. “When the jar would get warped it was definitely hard trying to figure out how everything went. It took a lot of time, but I think it was worth it in the end. But that’s what makes it special. I love how they came out.”
From the toddlers to the upperclassmen, there is no shortage of outstanding local artwork on display at the Parrish until April 26. “These are truly remarkable projects, well thought through, so there’s an intellectual premise behind a lot of these group artworks,” said Monica Ramirez-Montagut, the museum’s executive director. “Kudos to all the art teachers in the region who go out of their way to present something of this high caliber for the Parrish. We have a thousand students showing — a thousand artists or future adults that will engage with their inner child and come back to this moment and realize that color, materials, having fun, expressing your ideas, expressing yourself, is worthy of an art museum.”