Anchorage Daily News

The grand opening for the annual exhibit of artwork by local students on Wednesday will be one of the biggest art happenings of the year. It always is. For diversity, enthusiasm and the sheer size of the crowd, no other opening reception in the state can match it.

Each of the 70-some artists with work in the show is bound to bring at least one parent, plus siblings, friends and grandparents if available. The noise level is uncommonly high for the Anchorage Museum galleries where the art is shown. Cameras flash, and scrums of curious heads cluster in front of the work. A general excitement buzzes around the viewer and, when one has a moment to reflect, the thought may occur: If only all art shows opened with this level of youthful energy.

The 2009 Anchorage School District Art Exhibit, titled "Synthesizing Ideas," is somewhat smaller than in recent years. That's because the museum will be closing for two months as a big piece of the expansion project is completed. The ASD show usually takes place in the early spring, which would give students and teachers more time to complete more pieces in a normal year.

Another curve ball involved where to put the show. Usually, with hundreds of pieces, the big galleries are used, and large work can be displayed. Because of the compressed schedule, the only place available was on the walls of the central atrium.

The limited size meant that each item had to remain mostly on the small side; no flying V of geese filling the ceiling like last year. Further more, each school in the district was limited to submitting one piece. (Exceptions were made in the case of schools where more than one art teacher held classes.)

Faced with those parameters, some teachers thought outside the box. Mears Middle School teacher Kathleen Yackel, for instance, had four eighth-graders set their self-portraits into a single board. "It was a clever way to get four students into the show," admits Jody Jenkins, the museum's curator of art education.

Even reduced, there are intriguing and admirably executed pieces every few steps. Since the show is hanging now, Jenkins was able to give a sneak preview before the throngs show up Wednesday.

"Kids have some important messages," said Jenkins, a former ASD art teacher. "They have a big idea but can't put it into a picture because they don't have the experience or training as artists."

She paused by an untitled drawing by Sarah Snyder, a South High School senior. "Look at all that's going on in this one," she said.

Two figures accompanied by a bird cage on a child's wagon sit on a crate in a formal city setting with the lines of architecture and streets heading off to a vanishing point in the manner of the old Venetian master Canaletto.

But instead of the dome of St. Mark's Cathedral, the flag-topped dome at the end of the lines resembles the U.S. Capitol. Dominating the thing are three large, fanciful fish swimming by in midair as the figures view them as if watching a parade. One is reminded of Alaska artists Ray Troll and Daniel DeRoux.

Next to it is a triptych of three fanciful mechanical smoking pigs expertly drafted by West High School senior Mark Hansen.

Painstaking technique isn't limited to upperclassmen. On the opposite wall is a small ceramic landscape titled "Sometimes It Rains" with a quaintly tilted house and layers of clay that clearly took imagination to conceive and effort to pull off. The artist, Cassidy Glover, attends third grade in Girdwood.

In some ways, the smaller show is more viewable than some of the more enormous displays of previous years. There's no way one can fairly inspect 250 paintings, drawings, sculptures, assemblages or tapestries in one visit. The tidier assortment in "Synthesizing Ideas" is more manageable for this viewer.

But whether the show contains more or fewer pieces in the future, one hopes that big class collaborations like the flying geese return next year, when an expanded facility will be ready to accommodate the flock.

Find Mike Dunham online at adn.com/contact/mdunham or call 257-4332.

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