Boothbay region student-artists have work on display for Youth Art Month in Augusta and Portland.  

Boothbay Region High School senior Duyen Nguyen and Boothbay Region Elementary School fourth grader Shawn Gamage have work at the Portland Museum of Art. BRES eighth grader Grace Campbell has art at the Maine Education Association.

At the beginning of the year, BRES art teacher Jessica Nadeau asks her students to think about lines and landscapes - real or imagined - and perspective. When selecting a student’s art for the annual Youth Art Month exhibition, she considers students who go above and beyond, who are pushing boundaries, and are good citizens, such as cleaning up their area and helping clean up in general. 

Gamage's “My Patterned Mountain” is composed of paper, markers and Zentangles, or structured patterns. 

“I just drew a mountain and added some scribbly (Zentangle) lines, and filled it in with gray. Then I colored the sky blue and made the sun ... and drew some clouds,” he said. 

Gamage was surprised when Nadeau told him she had chosen his mountain for the Portland Museum of Art. "I thought it was pretty cool,” he said. “I like art because you can draw whatever you want. Drawing is really satisfying.”

Campbell's George Washington is displayed at the MEA offices in Augusta. Grace and her parents, Tricia and Jason Campbell, attended the reception for the young artists at the MEA on March 3.

The assignment: Use an image of a person’s face from a piece of art, draw hair and a body,  then add  Zentangles. Initially, Grace was kind of stuck on where to go with it after pasting on the face. Nadeau suggested she draw on her fondness of history. 

“I thought, yeah, I could definitely do a female George Washington. I drew on the hat, Zentangled the cherries (because of the myth about him chopping down the cherry tree), and wrote out the preamble to the Constitution (because we had memorized it) in cursive on the clothing ... I feel it’s a twist on history, putting the new in with the old. I like it a lot,” she said.

BRHS art teacher Manon Lewis chose Nguyen’s “Still Life” for the Portland Museum of Art youth exhibition.

Nguyen recalled the project. Lewis set out many objects for the students to choose from for their graphite drawings on paper. These objects, in addition to the guitar, vase of flowers, trumpet, rope and striped fabric Nguyen chose, included a kitchen scale, a teapot, shoe, glass ... It was an assignment about light and shadow, perspective ... no rough drafts, just one draft. “All the lights were off ... we had to figure out the light and shading ... it was calming, relaxing. drawing in the zone,” said Nguyen. 

Nguyen said although her work is simplistic, “it’s also interesting to look at.” 

Interested in more information on the Youth Art Month exhibition? Visit www.portlandmuseum.org/learn/youth-art-month. The Portland Museum of Art is at 7 Congress Square, Portland. The exhibition is on the lower ground floor. Free admission for this exhibit.

And for more information about Zentangles, visit https://zentangle.com ... it’s pretty cool.

For more than 20 years, the Portland Museum of Art and the Maine Art Education Association (MAEA) have collaborated to bring National Youth Art Month to Maine. This annual observance emphasizes the value of art education and encourages support for quality school art programs through a month-long exhibition of artwork by K-12 students throughout the state.