A 'Meet the Masters' student created a personal version of Van Gogh's 'Starry, Starry Night.'

New art course teaches kids to imitate masters

By Kelly Wilkinson

A grant program at Lakewood Elementary School is helping to form a new crop of Picassos, Renoirs, Degases and Monets for at least the next school year.

This past year, the school introduced a national arts course called "Meet the Masters," a copyrighted program that Lakewood's parent teacher organization (PTO) bought for the school.

The year-long class comes with a specially trained teacher, videos, slides and a learning packet specific to each artist. Throughout the integrated studies course, the facilitator, Sandra Beard, profiles seven accomplished artists and puts their work in historical context by delving into the artist's culture and background. Students, who range from kindergarten to fifth grade, also create artwork using the specific styles of the artists.

"It's sort of like an art history lesson as well," said Karen Romito, Lakewood's assistant principal and director of the program. "It was a smash hit this year."

Beard said the nationwide program is unique because of its ability to incorporate new ways of approaching art. For instance, she said students tried upside-down drawing while they studied Picasso.

"They had to look at a line drawing and turn it upside down and then draw it from that perspective," she said. "They were so amazed that it came out looking the way it should because they weren't thinking of eyes, ears, and noses. They were just connecting lines in space."

Students also studied Civil War Americana when they studied Homer and texture when they looked at Van Gogh's thickly painted artwork.

"They're learning these things that they can really use in other areas."

Because of the program's success, the school applied for and received a $5,000 grant from the nonprofit agency Cultural Initiatives/Silicon Valley. The grant is allowing Meet the Masters to continue at Lakewood next year.

Cultural Initiatives is a regional arts collaborative formed in 1997 in response to a valleywide study of the area's cultural needs. More than 1,000 groups from art circles, businesses and local governments participated in the study. The group, which emphasizes bringing art back to schools, is calling the results of the research a "a blueprint for a cultural renaissance."

Lakewood applied for the grant in March, and received the money last month. Romito said the school is enthusiastic about the opportunity to extend the year-old program.

"It's an opportunity to include a number of other lessons as well as for the students to create their own little masterpieces," she said. "I've never seen a program that provides this integration, and goes beyond the silly, little holiday crafts."

Romito said next year the students will study different artists, and the program will become further integrated into other courses. Romito used geometry as an example of integration, saying students could study the lines and planes of shapes found in cubism.

Romito said borrowing artistic techniques from the selected artists provides an encouraging and non-threatening structure for students' artistic development.

"If you ask a bunch of kindergartners if they can draw, they all say yes," she said. "But by the time they're in the fifth grade, probably only 4 or 5 will say yes. Over time society has taught them to lose their confidence in their abilities to draw."

As students create their artwork, Romito said it's displayed in "the Lakewood School of Art, which is also our lobby."

"This isn't just refrigerator art here," she said.

"This really brings students out," Beard said. "Some of the students who are so quiet really come alive when they become involved in these projects."

Cultural Initiatives deputy director Kate Cochran, who viewed some of the artwork at the school's district office, said Lakewood is the only school in the Bay Area using the "Meet the Masters" program.

"I think the program is admirable in making the connection between high art and what a child can create in their own classroom," Cochran said.

Romito said the school has just applied for a "greenhouse grant" from the non-profit, which all public schools in the district are eligible for. Cochran said Cultural Initiatives is still collecting applications for these larger, longer-term grants which aim to develop a five-year plan to include arts programs in the curriculum "on a less vulnerable basis."

Cochran said no other Sunnyvale schools have applied for the grants.

"But the deadline is the end of June, so we'll probably get the majority of the applications the end of next week."