School districts throughout the nation are grappling with crippling budget cuts, larger class sizes and fewer programs. In unprecedented numbers, parents are frequently called upon to bridge the gap when their local school districts no longer provide certain classes, like music and art, which were commonplace 15-20 years ago.
A group of local parents whose children attend Farragut Elementary School have been actively stepping forward to give their children and their young peers the same artistic experiences that they enjoyed as children. The forum they have used is Artworks!, a two-day fundraising event that features an adults-only night where art, sports memorabilia, professional services, certificates, summer camps and electronics are among the items that are part of an auction. Live music, food and a full bar are also part of the festivities.
Now in its seventh year, the fundraiser is designed to generate money to pay for an arts program and salary of an instructor at Farraguat.
The adults-only night takes place Saturday, April 24, at the Royal-T Gallery on Washington Boulevard in Culver City from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. The next morning, beginning at 10 a.m., is “Community Arts Day,” where student art, as well as auction items, are open to the public for viewing.
“The visual arts help our children learn about other ways of viewing and interpreting the world around them,” Kathleen McKernin, this year’s Artworks! chair, told the News. “The self-portraits that they create after studying (painter Pablo) Picasso and cubism are wonderful.”
(Cubism is an avant garde movement pioneered in the early 20th century by Picasso and French painter and sculptor George Braque. In cubist artworks, objects are broken up, analyzed, and re--assembled in an abstracted form.)
“(Students) are taught that art is all around them; in the architecture they see, in the natural materials that are used to make pigments, in how color is a lighting effect,” McKernin said.
Culver City Unified School District Board of Education member Scott Zeidman praised McKernin and her fellow organizers who volunteer their time to Artworks!
“These Farragut parents have put together a great program,” said Zeidman, a Farragut alumnus. “The talent that we see from the kids is really incredible.”
The theme of this year’s festivities is “The Green Year: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” and is the brainchild of Debra Bianculli, the school’s in-house art teacher.
“We worked on a lot of environmentally-friendly projects this year,” Bianculli, 28, said.
One of those projects will be on the auction block at Artworks! and involves the creation of paper. Last year, Bianculli’s students constructed homemade paper books that their teacher believes dovetails into this year’s theme.
“We saved scraps of paper left over from last year and arranged them into ‘color families,’ which are colors that are analogous to each other,” explained Bianculli, who has taught at Farragut since 2007.
Each “family” was then placed in a blender, transformed into paper pulp and later poured over a screen to remove the moisture.
The end result was homemade paper, and a lesson in sustainability.
McKernin, who calls Bianculli Farragut’s “artist-in-residence,” says the teacher’s influence on Artworks! and the students has been amazing.
“What impresses me about her is her enthusiasm for art. Her enthusiasm is infectious and the kids become passionate about what they are learning, doing and making,” McKernin said. “She also instills into the kids that art is not a ‘stand alone’ field, it incorporates math, science and the written word.”
McKernin says she has read studies that have shown that exposure to multiple arts disciplines strengthens a child’s academic growth and development as an individual.
“Music can strengthen children’s math skills, visual arts can help with perception and geometry, theater arts can help children with expressing themselves,” the event chair stated.
Bianculli is impressed by her students’ creativity.
“There is so much that you can do with very little,” the teacher pointed out. “What’s really interesting is that they find that they can teach their parents certain things.”
McKernin, a landscape architect who is a former movie studio set designer, said having parents who live in a “movie town” like Culver City makes planning Artworks! a fun endeavor.
“We have benefited greatly from our local creative community. Many of our parents work in the film industry and bring their sound, rigging, lighting and building talents to our theater shows,” McKernin said. “Seeing something visually can tell a story much quicker than an hour-long lecture.”
McKernin is also intriuged by the “The Green Year: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” concept.
“The kids can learn about caring for their planet and how to be good stewards of the earth by learning how to ‘reduce-reuse-recycle,’” she noted. “Therefore, this was the perfect theme.”
Zeidman takes a great deal of pride in what the Farraguat parents are doing with Artworks! and he feels they should as well.
“They should be proud of what they’ve done and are doing,” he said. “It’s so great to see that the students’ creativity is being showcased.”
CCUSD Superintendent Myrna Rivera Coté did not return calls seeking comment on the district’s view of Artworks!
Despite the recession, fundraising efforts have not tailed off significantly during the last two years, according to McKernin.
“Last year, the economic climate was so dreary that we anticipated raising the same as the previous year or less than previous years,” she recalled. “Yet, the community seemed to rally to our cause, even more so because they knew the need was greater.
“It was very gratifying.”
What is equally satisfying to Bianculli is watching her students after they complete a project.
“It’s very meaningful and gratifying for me to be able to see their enthusiasm,” she said, “because they are literally transforming things.”
The Royal-T Gallery is located at 8901 Washington Blvd.
