Hardy School Highlights Art Program

At Arlington's Hardy Elementary School, there are four core values the students embody everyday – love of learning, academic success, self-confidence, sense of community – and last night, they showed the community how they express them visually as well.

Hardy School Arts Night is an annual spring event that draws a crowd of hundreds to the school gymnasium where parents and children co-mingle with faculty and staff over pizza. But this year was a little different.

Instead of creating projects that they could later take home, the students worked on collaborative, permanent artwork that will now hang in the school's halls. Each piece of art in some way is a "visual representation of the Hardy School values," principal Deb D'Amico said.

For very young children, creating a visual from an abstract concept is a tall order, said art teacher Deb Martin who started the year a little unsure of how it would work. "I was pleasantly surprised," she said.

Both Martin and D'Amico worked with the students.  They led them in discussions about what those core values mean to them. Martin used it as an opportunity to teach the students lessons in artistic mediums – mosaic tiles, felt stitching, painting – as well as a chance to study some artists like Andy Warhol and Eric Carle, but it was more than that. 

This year's lesson was about thinking outside the box, communication and  interdisciplinary study.

The older students braved some of the more "difficult to grasp" core values – academic success, love of learning - while the younger students created schools of fish and people holding hands, depicting "community."

The colorful renditions drew smiles and even some approving gasps from the nearly 100 people mingling in the school's gymnasium. Pleased parents took photos of even-more-pleased children who posed with the artwork they created.

"It was a collaborative effort," D'Amico said.  In fact, the PTO raised $1,000 to buy art supplies. Three mothers stitched the individual felt squares into quilts.

In a year when the school faces a $4 million deficit and cuts to an art program that is already only meeting once a week for forty minutes, it is a program like this that showcases just how much art education can help children understand their world.

"These were difficult concepts," admitted Martin who was very impressed by the way the students were able to integrate what they were learning in other subjects into their art class. 

For the parents, it was an opportunity to see just how much work their children put into the project. "This is quite impressive," said Pilar Raynor Jordan whose daughter is in third grade.

She has seen many a Hardy Art Show, but this one was particularly special she said.  "But really, it is special every year. Each time it evolves just a little bit," she said. "It is such a great way to see how the children grow."