All about art
Festival celebrates student music and art

Kendall Harry and Rachael Lee and the Churchrock Academy drum group play as students sing a song on Thursday at First Baptist Church. Twelve schools participated in the annual Gallup McKinley County Schools Fine Arts Festival. — © 2009 Gallup Independent / Brian Leddy

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff writer

GALLUP — Jana Billy, 10, a fifth-grader from Juan de Oñate Elementary School, liked learning the basics of playing a ukulele and African drums even if beating the drums hurt her hands a bit. But she was making music, and it was a fun break from a regular day at school.

Billy, along with about 130 other elementary school students, was a participant in the Gallup-McKinley County Schools Elementary Fine Arts Festival on Thursday. Twelve schools in the district sent students to the festival, which was held at Gallup’s First Baptist Church. The students spent the morning attending a variety of music and art workshops, and after lunch they showed their parents what they had learned during a one-hour fine arts program.

Students surveyed during the lunch hour seemed to agree that the morning had been fun. KianaLynn Yazzie, 11, and Vanessa Garcia, 10, fifth-graders from Thoreau, enjoyed making 3-D hot air balloons in an art class, while fellow classmate, Mikayla Largo, 11, enjoyed drawing caricature faces in another class.

Jenna Macias, 8, a third-grader from Turpen Elementary, enjoyed her art and drum workshops best, while her friend, Jessica Ramirez, 9, couldn’t decide which of her three morning workshops she liked the best.

Ramah fourth-graders, Seth Hannah, 10, and Alton Badeezchiil, 9, also had fun during the morning, but during lunch they said they were looking forward to their upcoming acting in a performance piece entitled “Life Cycle of the Butterfly.”

The performance art was one of the featured student performances during the afternoon program. Music students sang or danced in nine other acts, from large group musical numbers directed by Stagecoach music teacher Larissa Tsigrinskaja, to a square dancer performance, and to vibrant African drum and Caribbean calypso music under the direction of Church Rock Academy music teacher Randy Markham. Other student musicians played ukuleles, recorders, xylophones, glockenspiels, and even “boomwhackers” — colorful hollow tubes that are whacked on the floor.

In addition to the music and dance, three art teachers gave presentations on the art workshops they had conducted with students that morning.

According to Kathy Bostic, the music teacher from Indian Hills who spearheaded this year’s festival, the purpose of the annual event is for fine arts teachers to meet and learn from each other, for students to spend the day enjoying music and art instruction, and for the festival to be a fine arts showcase for the community.

The First Baptist Church has hosted the festival, she explained, because the church facility has a number of classrooms for the workshops and its large sanctuary lends itself for the performance space.

Each elementary school in the district now has either a music teacher or an art teacher, Bostic explained, with music programs currently outnumbering art programs. Of the 12 schools that participated in the festival this year, the music and art teachers each selected a dozen students from their school to attend. Bostic said organizers tried to offer a mix of art and music workshops for each student, and they tried to mix the groups of students so no one school would dominate a particular workshop.

“None of the students went with their regular classroom teacher,” she added.

Fellow festival organizer Steve Heil said the event may need to look for a larger facility in the future if it continues to grow.

Heil, an art teacher at Juan de Oñate, has been very active in supporting fine arts not only in the Gallup-McKinley County Schools but also in the local community.

Heil said anyone interested in promoting the arts in schools, getting more fine art classes to students, and making funding more efficient for fine arts programs is invited to join a local community group. The group meets monthly on the third Thursday of the month, he said, at 4 p.m. at Camille’s Sidewalk Café.

Elementary schools that participated in this year’s Fine Arts Festival included Chee Dodge, Church Rock Academy, Indian Hills, Juan de Oñate, Ramah, Red Rock, Rocky View, Roosevelt, Stagecoach, Thoreau, Turpen, and Twin Lakes.

Information: Steve Heil at sheil@gmcs.k12.nm.us