How does a teacher influence a student? Is a six-year-old more likely than a sixty-year-old to take on the teacher’s style? Here’s an exploration of those questions.
Fresh Perspectives: HCA Students and Teachers is installed in HCA’s Lotvin Family Gallery in clusters, students’ work radiating from the sun of the teacher. Let’s see what we can learn.
Four teachers - Sarah Alexander (painting and drawing), Richard Denzer (watercolor), Heather Heverling (sewing), and Cathy Howe (painting and drawing) in whose classes kids from 4 to 82 expanded their creativity, are the hubs of this show. “These teachers and students represent the more than two dozen teachers and 400 students who made art at HCA in the past year,” says HCA co-director Kris Waldman.
Beau Vienneau is 6. In his Sharpie and watercolor painting Happy Tree, hundreds of blue squiggles make a shimmering, spindly shape outlined by yellow squiggles. From its branches hang fruit of concentric circles in many colors.
Cindy Yang, 14, studies the forms and refractions of cat’s-eye marbles in her watercolor, The Outsider. They’re piled high. Light passing through casts soft shadows. Off by itself is the big, serious-looking shooter, gravely apart from the crowd.
Jack Miller, 10, shows The Bearded Dragon. Out of this pastel peers a lizardly reptile, scuttling in front of dry hills on taloned feet. Under a striated sky of purples, greens, blues, and greys, he stilly eyeballs the viewer.
Annaleigh Crantz, also 10, worked with Perler beads, tiny plastic circles that, once arranged, can be ironed into keeping their places. Annaleigh’s View from a Distance is a knockout. Her 1740 beads make a pixel-like portrait of a tousled-haired gentleman, wide-eyed and smiling broadly.
Exhibiting artists:
Reyaa Aditham
Sarah Alexander
Callie Arthur
Prajakta Baishya
Lori Barnes
Ally Barry
Samantha Bilello
Hannah Borzumato
Emma Buckland
Ritisha Choudhury
Annaleigh Crantz
Shari Daly
Richard Denzer
Ali Desmond
Jennifer Donahue
Celeste Falcone
Ailin Flannery
Dina Gardner
Zoe Gomi
Ava Harriman
Norah Heling
Heather Heverling
Charlotte Holden
Catherine Howe
Reese Hunter
Alice Knights
Anya Kogan
Jeremy Kress
Grace Liu
Kate MacDonald
Zain Masood
Gwyneth McAvoy
Judy McGrail
Jack Miller
Ada Monopoli
James Morningstar
Mackenzie Ostrowski
Vansh Patel
Veer Patel
Dhitri Patel
Emily Peterson
Claire Ristau
Savannah Rivera
Margaret (Peg) Rothwell
Cadence Sanborn
Aubrey Thomas
Izael Thomas
Anjana Venkatram
Beau Vienneau
Caroline Waryas
Cindy Yang
To see more work by these student artists, visit www.hopartscenter.org.