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Evanston art teachers showcased their students’ work at the annual YEA! Festival on Saturday in Raymond Park.
Teachers from 29 schools represented their programs at display booths, ready to answer questions about the projects their students designed throughout the school year.
This is the 39th year that Young Evanston Artists has hosted the event. Open Studio Project partnered with the group for the festival, its second time in a row doing so.
OSP Creative Director Hope Washinushi said OSP’s mission, “art for well-being,” aligns with that of the YEA! Festival.
“With students now going through so many issues with the pressures, not just from families and the internet, but personal pressures, arts is a release,” Washinushi said. “(You’re) able to express yourself.”
In preparation for the festival this year, students at Willard Elementary School learned how to make figures from found objects.
Willard art teacher Matthew Bush said the goal of the project was to encourage viewers to have a “meaningful encounter” with the students’ work.
“It’s not an easy project, and nobody started smoothly,” Bush said. “But that’s what the good stuff is always like. Everything important is hard.”
Bush said he appreciated the resourcefulness and perseverance his students demonstrated throughout the project. In particular, he said he watched his students ask their peers questions about each other’s techniques to improve their work.
While Bush understands that his students will not all be professional artists, he said they will use the tools they learned in his class regardless.
“I think that when a kid is really applying themselves in art, it shows up in every other subject of theory,” Bush said.
Callum Hiew, a preschool student at the Joseph E. Hill Early Childhood Center, said his art teacher taught him how to use paint sticks to draw flowers and learn how flowers grow.
“The worms help the Earth,” he said.
Megan O’Reilly, a visual art teacher at Kingsley Elementary School and Lincoln Elementary School, highlighted the importance of early art education in developing students’ fine motor skills.
This year, her students made four animals from clay and drew corresponding paper backdrops for the habitat they live in.
Pinching and pulling the clay to mold into a figure develops the hand muscles vital for writing and cutting, and promotes problem solving and lateral thinking, O’Reilly said.
According to O’Reilly, the district received a grant from the state this year that allowed every student to have access to clay and put kilns in every Evanston/Skokie School District 65 elementary school.
“I’ve felt very supportive in this district in giving us all the materials and opportunities we need to create our art,” O’Reilly said. “That’s one of the things I love about Evanston.”
Other teachers at the event expressed some concern that funding for art programs could be decreased. The district has agreed to cost-cutting measures as it aims to eliminate its structural deficit by fiscal year 2030.
However, Denise Taylor, a visual and media arts teacher at Nichols Middle School and Haven Middle School, stressed the importance of an arts education, which she said is something that “young brains” need “really badly.”
“I hope that art continues to be something that is valued for those people who make those decisions on what gets cut,” Taylor said. “But I feel like Evanston does appreciate the art. So hopefully art stays robust.”
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