Art Center showcases student art

The first show of 2008 for the Art Center at Fallbrook highlights the art of area students. Titled “Art of Today, Artists of Tomorrow,” it will run through January 27. This year also marks the 14th anniversary of the Center.

Through the generosity of the show underwriters and sponsors the Center is able to offer the show and allow the students to compete for monetary awards in support of their art. The Center presented a total of $2,500 to 17 students. The show underwriters are Paul and Diane Garrett; the sponsors are Vince Ross and an anonymous donor.

Participants include students from Fallbrook High School (instructor Bill Richardson), Great Oak High School of Temecula (instructor Laura Sanders), Guajome Park Academy (instructor Naomi Kadinoff), San Pasqual High School of Escondido (instructor Michelle Gilbert), Temecula Valley High School (instructors Karen Moreland and Mary Pohl) and Vista High School (instructors Barbara Marks and Carolyn Thom).

The show was inspired by the Brooke Thom Memorial Art Show, which was presented at the Art Center from 1999 to 2004. Thom was a talented artist and Fallbrook High School senior who was killed by a drunk driver in 1999 at age eighteen. She was the daughter of Scott Thom and Carolyn Thom, who is one of the current art instructors at Vista High School.

The opening of the show took place on Saturday, January 12, and instead of cheese and crackers the Center cleverly provided pizza, cheese puffs and M&Ms to please the younger set.

The presentation includes work in all mediums and processes. On opening night, a student from Vista High School, Jesse Gonzales, used a canvas set up outside to spray paint through stencils creating a large painting, which is a tribute to the firefighters who worked to save our homes in Southern California during the recent wildfires. It is also a tribute to the people who lost their homes in the fires.

Carolyn Thom, Gonzales’ art teacher, commented that the student, a tenth-grader, is a second-year art student. “He has a creative heart and is always willing to ‘go outside the box;’ I didn’t help him a lot with this.”

Thom encourages creativity in students, “whatever speaks to them, whatever direction they want to go. In their second year they are starting to develop their style.”

Regarding the work to be displayed at the show, Thom said, “I just put it out to my students.”

Many of the pieces on display deal with social issues, such as a work by David Rodriguez of Great Oak High School in Temecula who, with his moving painting of an emaciated brown-skinned person, highlights the growing problem of starvation throughout the world.

Sydney Roark, also of Great Oak, portrays “Mother Nature” in an intriguing oil painting in various shades of green using leaves as hair.

Melissa Daly of San Pasqual High School has several provocative pen and ink pieces; she deftly creates her images with lines and small dots.

A piece by Vista High School student Drew Chasse, “Toothpicks in Stone,” was created using a bucket seemingly suspended in the air with toothpick water dripping from it.

Uriel Hernandez from Guajome Park Academy presents a collage done with a picture of the artist and his mother in front of a cathedral in Mexico. In the work, he incorporated the map that he used to find the cathedral. The map is creatively superimposed on their faces.

A Tatum Dalleroy piece draws the viewer to another culture as the San Pasqual student portrays a black-robed Saudi Arabian woman in pen and ink with a small child at her side.

Great Oak student Aime Arce’s papier-mché dragon is even breathing fire!

Melanie Rendon, a student at Vista High School, is showing a skateboarding sculpted figure entitled “Dude!” that she fashioned with soda cans, tape and wire. She split the cans and flattened them to create shorts. The figure’s legs are created with smashed cans and the hair on the skateboarder’s head is made with the can’s “pop tops.”

Todd Braverman of Vista High School created a plaster sculpture layered with candy wrappers entitled “You Are What You Eat.” “To create my candy man I used plaster. First I covered my hand, then I went up my arm, over my shoulder and up my neck and onto my face.” After it dried, Todd removed the plaster and covered it with candy wrappers.

Danielle Trieger of Temecula Valley High School won Best of Show with her expressive piece depicting skeletons that seem to possess human qualities.

The Art Center is located at 103 South Main in Fallbrook. Call (760) 728-1414 or access http://www.falbrookart.org for further information.