A night of fine art for county students East and West come together for Celebration of the Arts, April 27

  • By Dave Mast
  • April 24, 2010
  • 455
                        
Holmes County students will showcase their artistic talents with ink, paintbrush, musical talents and more, when the Holmes County Celebration of the Arts comes to Hiland High School on Tuesday, April 27, at Hiland High School’s Perry Reese Jr. Community Center. The event features students throughout Holmes County, from grades kindergarten through 12, who have created visual arts or are participating in both the West Holmes and Hiland choirs and bands. The purpose of the event is to celebrate the talents and skills of Holmes County’s youth in the arena of art education. The evening is open to the public, and should be a fantastic night of entertainment, with both of the school’s choir and band groups combining their talents under the instruction of special guest directors, and an amazing combination of visual arts, which include mediums like pencil, ink, paint, computer graphics, three-dimensional art, clay and more. The celebration of the Arts committee members, consisting of visual art and music teachers from around Holmes County, are excited to be able to unite as one to present such as diverse and talented group of youth. “We’ve got a nice variety of pieces, from patriotic and quickly-paced music to slower numbers, so it should be a lot of fun as well as a nice challenge for the kids to put everything together,” said Allison Mooibroek, Hiland band director on the band and choir concerts. “We’re really looking forward to having the opportunity to play with the West Holmes band. It’s always fun to get together with that many instruments and play. We will have close to 150 kids playing, and it should be a lot of fun.” The two school choirs will perform together, as will the bands. Aside from the school directors taking part in conducting both events, the bands will be under the direction of guest conductor Jonathan Willis, band director at Mt. Union College, while the choirs will enjoy the direction of Timothy Frye of The College of Wooster. Mooibroek said that the school band directors got together and chose several pieces which they have been working on over the past several weeks, while Frye also sent them a couple of numbers, which they will only have a few days to work on as individual school bands. On the day of the event, West Holmes will bring both its choir and band to Hiland for a four-hour practice session so the groups can become more accustomed to playing together. “We’re not going to have a long time to rehearse the new music, but I think that our groups are talented enough that they will catch on pretty quickly,” said Mooibroek. While the concert will take place at 7 p.m. in the Reese Center, Celebration of the Arts will officially kick off at 5:30 p.m., with the visual arts display show in the Reese Center lobby, as well as in the gymnasium behind the stage area. There, both two- and three-dimensional artwork from students from the all over the county’s elementary and secondary schools will be on display. The art work was submitted by county art teachers, with a committee then selecting how to best display the individual pieces. West Holmes High School and Millersburg Elementary art teacher Cathie Lynch was the person responsible for beginning the Celebration of the Arts program more than a decade ago, when she applied for and received a grant to fund it. Since that time, the county has gotten the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the unique artistic abilities of its students, from east to west. Lynch said that the program has grown far beyond her expectations when a number of area staff first began working on the event years ago. “When we first started this, we just wanted to get the entire county working together as one, and hoped that the people of Holmes County would come out to recognize these kids who have done such a great job,” said Lynch. “I love the name celebration, because that is exactly what it is. We want to celebrate their gifts and abilities. But it has grown so much bigger than we ever expected it to be. So many creative minds have worked to make it what it has become.” Lynch gave much of the credit to Gary DeVault, the fine arts coordinator for Tri-County Educational Service Center, whom she said was instrumental in the progress of the event. For the visual arts portion of the evening, each art teacher is allowed to select pieces for up to 10 percent of the school’s population. In Lynch’s case, she has 420 students at Millersburg and 800 students at the high school, meaning that she could possibly select up to 42 and 80 pieces respectively. Averaging that out over the county’s high schools, middle schools and elementary schools, that’s a lot of art. “It makes for a lot of unique, colorful presentations,” said Lynch. On Tuesday during school, the committee members and some of the Hiland art students will take a four-hour block and hang all of the art, which was pre-matted by each teacher, along the bleachers in the gymnasium and in the lobby of the Reese Center. The art teachers at each school collect their favorite pieces from throughout the year, thus assuring plenty of variety, and most of all, a lot of quality and individuality in the artwork. Lynch said that they always have a lot of parents and grandparents coming out to check out the artwork, but added, “We’d love to see everyone in the community come out and support these students for their dedication to the arts, whether it’s visual arts or in music. It’s a fun night of celebration.”


Loading next article...

End of content

No more pages to load