Oceanside students get ‘artsy’

The Oceanside School District held its annual Arts Festival on May 12, an event that showcases over 1,000 student works of art. Student work is submitted by art teachers for consideration, and the works featured are created by children as young as age 5. The scope of artistic styles and media ranges from drawings and paintings on paper or canvas to photography and sculpture. Students also created computer graphics and animation, in addition to jewelry, masks, lamps, fashion drawings and more.

The Art Festival is one of the most popular and well-attended events of the school year, school officials said. The event itself is set up like an art museum, spokeswoman Donna Kraus explained. Temporary white walls are erected in the high school gym to showcase art, and direct the flow of traffic through the entire exhibit. Kraus said that the school's Fine and Performing Arts Department and the district's art teachers devote months of planning for the event and spend hours reviewing and organizing student work and setting up the exhibit. —A.R.