Library show features student projects
Sixty pieces are on display
Paintings of a pagoda, hex sign and a self-portrait silhouette are just three of more than 60 student artworks displayed in the windows of the Exeter Community Library.
The works will be exhibited at the library, 4565 Prestwick Drive, through April 4 in commemoration of Youth Art Month, held each March.
The month-long celebration encourages support for quality school art programs and recognition of skills, such as creativity, problem solving, observation and communication, developed through student art projects.
The Exeter library has hosted a student art show each March for the past 12 or so years, said Laura Kauffman, children’s library director.
“We were right in the middle of last year’s exhibit when COVID hit,” she said, noting the library closed its doors to the public last March and has not yet reopened. “I kept thinking ‘There sits all that beautiful artwork that people are not going to get to see.’ “
So she took photographs of the works and posted them on the library’s website. But that just wasn’t personal enough for Kauffman, who holds a degree in art history and art management. So this year, she came up with a way to hold an inperson exhibit while still observing recommended guidelines for coronavirus safety.
“With Laura’s help at the ECL we made it happen,” Tim DeWalt, a Reiffton School art teacher and Exeter School District art department chairman, said. “And we’re not looking at art online.”
Parents and guardians submitted the student works safely, too, by depositing them in a drop box outside the library.
As in past years, the school district partnered with the library to produce the show, which was open to all students in Berks County for the first time.
Called Windows into Art, it features student artworks covering the huge windows wrapping around the building and filling the 20 panes composing a wall of glass on a gable end.
The works are best viewed by walking around the perimeter of the building in daylight.
“It is a way for the public to view the art while remaining outside and safely distanced,” Kauffman said.
There was another change, too.
“For the first time ever, the artworks are not all school assignments,” Kauffman said. “Many are chil- dren’s original works, what- ever they wanted to create.”
The only restriction was that the art had to be able to be hung in a window.
The art itself is a window, or outlet, for the youth, reflecting the way they view the world, how they are feeling and what they are thinking, she said.