Schoolchildren’s Artwork Is a Big Draw

Students from Pio Pico Elementary School were talking not only about art but about themselves this week as they visited a display of their drawings and paintings at a local gallery.

“That’s me,” one student confided proudly Monday as 30 classmates filed past his drawing at the Showcase Gallery in Santa Ana.

Visiting the exhibit was the culmination of art lessons taught over the past year by individual teachers and the Santa Ana Unified School District’s artist in residence program, under which artists work with local students.

The 30 artworks at the Showcase Gallery were chosen from 500 entries. Children drew inspiration from books, photographs and the works of famous artists.

One striking watercolor by third-grader Refugio Lopez showed an elephant surrounded by multicolored flowers on the ground and in the sky.

The young artist, 9, said he drew his inspiration from a newspaper photograph of an elephant. He added flowers, he said, simply because “I like them.”

Before visiting the gallery Monday, the Pio Pico students had cheese pizza and chicken wings on the house at nearby Planet Hollywood--a significant event, assistant principal Lillian French said.

Many of the children from downtown Santa Ana had never been to a sit-down restaurant before, French said.

Pio Pico students are not the only Santa Ana students to have their works displayed at local galleries this month.

Students from Carver, Wilson, Fremont and Lincoln elementary schools have sculptures and masks in the Daniel Arvizu Gallery in downtown Santa Ana through June 28 after participating in a 20-week art program called Special Studio.

Marie Taggart, who coordinates children’s displays for the Showcase Gallery, said such youth programs not only serve the community as an outlet for young artists to show their work, but attract potential customers.

“If you can get them to stay longer” as they peruse the school displays, she said, “you have more of a chance of selling them art.”