Gilroy
– Forget your Sunday’s best – put on your Saturday’s worst and
get messy at the 18th annual Kids Discover Arts day at Solorsano
middle school.
Gilroy – Forget your Sunday’s best – put on your Saturday’s worst and get messy at the 18th annual Kids Discover Arts day at Solorsano middle school.
Free and open to children ages five to 11 and their parents, this extravaganza will feature 20 local artisans giving ongoing tutorials in a variety of arts projects.
“The goal of the event is to provide as many school-aged children an opportunity to experience a broad array of visual arts free of charge,” said Cathy Mirelez, cultural arts and museum supervisor for the City of Gilroy.
A new table at this year’s festival capitalizes on the craze surrounding tradable card games, such as Yu-Gi-Oh. In the tutorial, kids will use drawings to create two of their own playing cards to trade with friends.
In addition to being entertaining, the card also will be a means of self-expression and a way to connect to other kids.
The card will be “a mini-picture into their lives,” Mirelez said. “It will represent them.”
The old standby booths will be present, including an origami workshop operated by the Japanese American Citizens League, a Suzuki violin tutorial and a creature collage workshop hosted by Rick Charvet.
In this last class, participants use the children’s book, “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” as an inspiration to make their own book of collages.
“It’s a great thing for kids to be able to use their imaginations to be able to cut, paste and have a good time,” said Charvet, who has taught at the event for eight years running.
It is thanks to his efforts and those of the other nearly 200 volunteers that the day is available to the kids.
“Of all the events I do, it’s the biggest. It’s an incredible amount of work but it’s very rewarding just to see the looks on their faces,” Mirelez said.
The festival is unique for Gilroy as “it’s one of the last art functions that’s around,” Charvet said.
Besides being a beacon of arts appreciation, the event is qualitatively different from school classes, in which kids are graded on their technique and work, he added.
“You make your little flower or you draw the way you draw – that’s okay. It’s for the process,” Charvet said. “There’s no strings attached.”
