Laguna Art Museum and Boys & Girls Club Team Up on Student Art Shows

Submitted by the Laguna Art Museum:

Laguna Art Museum and the Boys & Girls Club of Laguna Beach have teamed up to present two student exhibitions in the museum’s Young Artists Society Gallery. Both feature paintings and photographs by students involved with the Boys & Girls Club.

The first Boys & Girls Club exhibition, In Our Imagination, is on display now through April 14 and features paintings by students ages 5 to 12. The paintings were inspired by artist Allison Schulnik, whose paintings and clay animation films are currently on display at the museum as part of ex·pose, Laguna Art Museum’s contemporary art project series. For the exhibition, Boys & Girls Club Art Director Emily Murray worked with students in her after-school art class to create sculpted paintings using modeling paste and thick applications of acrylic paint, inspired by Schulnik’s heavily-applied oil paintings.

“I painted a crazy, abstract picture with lots of texture,” said participant Janine Johnson, age 10, who titled her painting The Creative Art. Twenty-four students participated in this project.

The second exhibition, ImageMakers National Photography Contest: Regional Winners, is on display in the Young Artists Society Gallery April 21-May 19.

The ImageMakers contest is organized by the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, sponsored by Sony Electronics, with winners advancing through local and regional contests before eventually competing in a field of 4,000 entries at the National Headquarters. This year the Boys & Girls Club of Laguna Beach is facilitating the Pacific Regional Contest, which draws from seven western states. Laguna Art Museum’s Young Artists Society gallery will be the exhibiting venue for the regional winners.

For this year’s local competition, over 120 Boys & Girls Club members, ages 6 to 18, presented 800 photos in a wall-to-wall exhibition in the 6th Annual National ImageMakers Photography Exhibit. The exhibition is on display at the Main Branch of the Boys & Girls Club of Laguna Beach through April 6. The photographs were judged by local photographers Tom Lamb and Mary Church, along with Mike Kahn, the Director of Sony Alpha Camera Systems and President of Photoimaging Manufactureres and Distributors.

“By introducing members to photography and digital arts, we are giving them the tools and opportunity to explore ways to express who they are creatively and to think outside of the box, starting at a young age,”  said club Art Director Emily Murray.

A reception for the Pacific Regional Contest winners will take place at Laguna Art Museum on April 21. This reception is free and open to the public.

The Young Artists Society Gallery is located on the lower level of the museum’s gallery space and features artwork by K-12 students from Orange County schools and non-profit groups throughout the year. The rotation of shows coincides with the museum’s exhibition schedule, and student work is displayed in the same professional manner as art in the rest of the galleries. Laguna Art Museum’s Education Department collaborates closely with teachers to prepare for an exhibition, with student work based on--and inspired by--one of the other exhibitions on display at the museum at the same time. Students also receive a special behind-the-scenes tour of the museum in the weeks before their exhibition. A special Young Artists Society Gallery opening reception takes place at the museum on the Sunday afternoon following regular night-time members’ openings of new exhibitions.

The In Our Imagination and ImageMakers exhibitions form part of wider collaborative partnership between Laguna Art Museum and the Boys & Girls Club of Laguna Beach. The museum is pleased to welcome Boys & Girls Club students on regular field trips to the museum for guided tours of the exhibitions and visits behind the scenes to see how the museum works.

LAGUNA ART MUSEUM HOURS
Monday-Tuesday, Friday-Sunday: 11:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
Thursday: 11:00 a.m.-9:00 p.m.
Closed Wednesday

PRICES
$7.00 general admission
$5.00 students, seniors, active military
FREE for children under 12 and museum members
FREE the first Thursday of every month from 5:00-9:00 p.m. during the Laguna Beach First Thursday Art Walk