McCormack Hall at the Solano County Fairgrounds was host Saturday to the best and brightest young artists as the Solano County Department of Education put together the event “Solano Art Showcase: Ignite” which displayed 400 pieces of art by students from 24 different schools and grades ranging from fourth to 12th.
Other partners helping put together the presentation were Fighting Back Partnership, Solano Youth Resiliency Summit, Solano Friday Night Live Partner, Rio Vista ATOD Alliance, VibeSolano and Nature of Sound.
Judges looked over each and every one of the pieces, honoring awards to, among others, Armijo junior Jasmine Hernandez. She was at the front of the venue when immediately she noticed her oil painting, “Night Walk” had won Best in Show.
“I was very surprised I won,” Hernandez said while looking at her award and art as her parents watched. “This took a lot of time, but I guess I just assumed somebody else would win.”
Hernandez said her art teacher had assigned a few options to take on. She says she liked the one for “Night Walk.”
“I liked how it was colorful and how it has some people in it and I like the umbrella and bench,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez then looked at her painting a little closer.
“I don’t know, next time I think I can do even better,” Hernandez said. “Being a perfectionist I see small white spaces that I could have done better with.”
Hernandez said she someday wants to either by an art teacher or maybe even a graphic designer.
Pam and Steve Conner didn’t know anyone who participated in the event, but still came from Vacaville to see the talent displayed at the fairgrounds.
“I’m impressed with not only the art, but the age of the kids that are doing it,” Pam Conner said. “There are so many styles here. Some are a little dark, but you look at them and you can tell that the artist was trying to convey a message.”
Pam said that she noticed the event on Facebook and was glad to pay this event a visit.
“We’ve noticed that art is coming back into the classrooms more and I believe that’s a very good thing because it used to be a choice — this or P.E.,” Pam Conner said. “We still need music, art, etc in this world. For kids, that’s often how they express themselves and tell us what they are all about.”
Steve and Pam Conner take a close look at student art during the Solano County Student Art Showcase put on by the Solano County Office of Education on Saturday in Vallejo. (Chris Riley/Times-Herald)
The art was divided into five divisions, with Division I being fourth, fifth and sixth grades, Division 2 being seventh and eighth grades, Division III being freshman and sophomore in high school and Division 4 being juniors and seniors in high school.
It was a special separate category not yet classified, Division 5, that had a piece of art that was the favorite of Ken Scarberry, the Solano Office of Education Director of Youth Development. The two pieces of art Scarberry liked were both by Mariani Ramos, a sixth-grader who drew “Portrait of Mom” and “Untitled.”
Scarberry was pleased to have the event back in person again.
“Our goal is to help promote young artists,” Scarberry said. “Each school has an art teacher that we coordinate with and it’s been great. We love that moving forward we’re even trying to expand. We now have outside performers and static art, which is all digital.”
Rebecca Floyd, a Project Coordinator of Youth Development for Solano County Office of Education, said that the venue “showcased some really talented students.”
“There is such a wide range of great stuff,” Floyd said. “You have mixed media, watercolor and a mask exhibit. There are over 400 pieces of art and they’re all amazing. I’m super excited to have this back.”
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
