The Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Maria Valley has quite a lot going on between its two club sites and eight After School Education and Safety (ASES) program sites in the valley, all of which focus on the club’s five core areas: character and leadership development, health and lifestyle skills, education and career development, sports, and the arts. The offerings available to local kids in the arts has expanded, especially as evidenced by the local club’s involvement with the Boys & Girls Clubs national exhibition competition.
The preparation for this began early last year, explained Anna Libbon, the club’s area director for the arts programs, when the club’s new executive director, Jeremy L. Deming, assigned a specific director to each core area. Libbon got the arts of course, because she had taught arts and different crafts at the club for years, but now she got to coordinate across all the club’s sites, solidifying a curriculum and unifying the program’s efforts.
Included in this unification, she explained, was the club’s engagement with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s National Fine Arts Exhibit Program, which includes the Imagemakers National Photography Program. They’ve participated before, but not like they are now, she said.
“This is the first time we’ve done it to this scale, so we’re competing against Boys & Girls Clubs all over the nation and the world, because there are Boys & Girls Clubs on military bases,” Libbon said. “We create artwork all year round at all of our sites, and now we’ve involved our ASES sites, so we’ve collected art from all the units we have.”
The competition includes a number of categories in fine art, including monochromatic drawing, multicolored drawing, watercolor, mixed media, collage, and even group projects. The photography contest categories include themes like culture and tradition, nature and surroundings, and portraits.
The number of art classes facilitated by the Boys & Girls Clubs at their various sites expanded over 2015, Libbon said, but it’s still growing. The photography class is the newest addition, she said, and included a batch of cameras purchased by Ann Sawyer, a coordinator with the Santa Maria-Bonita School District. The cameras were taken to each club site so the kids could learn composition and shooting techniques.
“They just had so much fun, because they never get to use just a camera on its own, it’s just all a cell phone now,” Libbon said. “Even a camera was new to them. It’s weird.”
The shared efforts of all the kids, from grade school to middle school students, will all hang at the Santa Maria Town Center Gallery through Feb. 12, which includes a reception on the last day. Winners (full disclosure: I am a judge for the show) are announced then as well, including the students whose pieces will go to the state, then national competitions, Libbon explained.
The exhibition and competition is really just a vehicle to get the kids’ work noticed though, Libbon said, because they produce so much of it throughout the year. Motivated to close the gap in arts education left by underfunding, the Boys & Girls Clubs allows kids across the valley to check in and tap into their creative potential.
“It is a big deal,” Libbon said. “If you have the right people in place who love art as much as I do, or as much as the children do, then they can really bring out the best in the kids.
“There are a lot of shy kids, and art is their outlet, and they do amazing work,” she added. “It’s so exciting to see them grow and get excited about it.”
Arts Editor Joe Payne is always excited about art. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 28 – Feb 4, 2016.