Brushing up on subjects including history, literature, food and science, the students at The Children’s School in La Jolla have finished their seven-week “Great Artists” unit and are ready to showcase their projects with a “Grand Finale” at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 11, on campus. All are welcome.
The 24th annual Great Artists program is intended to encourage children from toddler age through eighth grade at The Children’s School to develop an appreciation of art as they study specific artists’ styles and explore a variety of art media, according to information furnished by the school.
During this program, students work through an integrated curriculum with activities in math, science and social studies and more, along with learning to emulate each artist’s particular style and studying the culture and time period in which the artist lived and worked.
For the Grand Finale – which will start with food trucks on campus at 5 p.m. – all classrooms will have been transformed into showrooms for visitors to view the students’ art, open-house style.
For the program, each grade level chooses an artist to study.
Artists examined this year include UC San Diego professor emeritus and Murals of La Jolla artist Kim MacConnel, Walter Wick, Hokusai, Claude Monet and more.
The third-grade students chose Amadeo Bachar, a marine artist who lives in Santa Cruz.
When Bachar heard the kids selected him to study, he “offered to come down and paint a mural with them,” Head of School John Fowler said.
Bachar and the students worked for days to complete a mural set underwater in the La Jolla kelp forests, with iconic La Jolla landmarks in the background and recognizable local undersea residents such as the garibaldi, leopard sharks and rays.
It’s the school’s largest and only its second mural, Fowler said.
Bachar has worked as a science illustrator, providing content for outreach and education or technical illustrations for magazines and government organizations – including illustrating and identifying all the fish for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife – before transitioning to murals and full-time artistry.
Bachar asked each third-grade student to choose a fish from a brochure and draw it for the mural. During the collaboration, he made sure to instruct the children in science, from attention to the gills and fins and in art, including highlighting areas, color mixing and more.
The mural, which Fowler called “beautiful and amazing,” is “a really soft introduction to science illustration,” Bachar said.
