At Boothbay Region Elementary School and all across the nation, students celebrated Youth Art Month throughout March.

BRES art teacher Jessica Nadeau made it both a professional and personal goal to immerse BRES students in art as much as possible throughout the month putting up a weekly vote on a variety of artists and famous artworks among the many activities.

“From landscapes to portraits and abstract art to a concentration on Vincent Van Gogh, I have run a weekly drawing challenge where students were asked to create drawings from a prompt for the month of March … I also ran a theme week this last week to culminate our time celebrating the arts together. Each day had a theme based on some aspect of the arts.”

Bringing local artists into the classroom has been a years-long desire for Nadeau who drew inspiration from her time at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum where she organized events for members to visit studios around New York City.

“It was a snapshot into the art world that one wouldn’t see unless you were invited. I thought maybe we could have studio visits here. Artists could demonstrate some of their process, talk about their inspiration, and explain what they do in their chosen medium.”

In the final week of this year’s celebration, Nadeau was able to line up four artists to do just this – ceramics artist Alison Evans, graphic designer Jennifer Brennan, painter John Seitzer and mixed media artist Deb Arter.

Giving students access to art in this way is part of the job of being a 21st century educator, because youth need the creative thinking, problem-solving skills and exploration to prepare themselves for jobs and roles in technology that do not even exist yet, Nadeau said.

“Opening up their worlds to a variety of ways to use these skills is one way to start their conversation.”

Artists or art collectors interested in sharing their passion for the arts with BRES students should email: jnadeau@aos98schools.org