Arts education, which includes visual arts, music, drama, and media arts, is an important part of a well-rounded education. This newsletter serves to highlight the amazing work with the arts being done by school districts within our county.

"Huskywood" students enrolled in Advanced Video Production at Hanford West High School have entered into the production phase of their Creative Careers Leadership Lab (CCLL) short film challenge. Director and Screenwriter Joseph Aguirre listens in on the acting performance of Estaban Nava Nunez and Angel Zaragoza, while Director of Photography Jovanie Bello pulls focus between the two actors in an amazingly emotional story of brothers learning to move on after the loss of a parent. The small crew constructed a green screen surrounding the vehicle so the background can be replaced with street motion in post production, and a simple garden hose provided rain on demand to create a realistically sad rainy day. It's hard to tell as equipment is wrapped in plastic, however there are 3 cameras in place as well as additional lighting to help the actors pop on camera.

Short film challenges like this allow students to perform in front of a statewide audience, utilizing skills learned in class and extending into much larger projects than could even be attempted during a typical school day. CCLL is a Career and Technical Student Organization Pilot focusing on connecting students to careers in the field of Arts, Media, and Entertainment. Students have been able to meet with industry professionals remotely and receive coaching on meeting industry standards. For this project, students created original scripts and storyboards as part of their pre-production, and will complete their work editing in Adobe Premier Pro, an industry standard software. CCLL Challenge films will be showcased at the upcoming GRID conference in March.

In Ms. McCaslin's seventh grade art classes at Pioneer Middle School, students have been working to achieve mastery over balancing positive and negative space. The students also focused on the principles of pattern and rhythm to add more variety to their masterpieces. Advanced Art students have been studying modern art movements spanning from about the 1950's to the present! We took a close look at Pop Art and the students used this art style to help them gain a deeper understanding of color relativity. Their work can be seen below.

Students enrolled at JC Montgomery have an opportunity to participate in a Multimedia Production Career Technical Education course. Recently, students created promotional videos for several nonprofits who frequently work with the students at JCM. Below is the promotional video they created for Urbanists Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to community engagement through the arts. The video students created can be seen below.

Students in Ms. Bejarano's art classes at Hanford High School have been working on the following projects. Their work can be seen below.

• Art 1 shaded spheres with patterned backgrounds
• Art 2 students created portraits and achromatic paintings
• Art 3 created abstract watercolor designs using a variety of techniques
  
• Art 2 and 3 also created independently designed pieces as part of their finals
• Art 4 students selected a favorite artist and created pieces that emulated those artists

Students in Mr. Brauckman's art classes have created a variety of pieces recently:

• Art 1 students worked on Linear Perspective in a Haunted Environment
• Ceramics 1 students created whistles
• Ceramics 2 students created face and skull mugs
• AP Art 2 students designed artwork in pencil

In December, Entertainment Design students finished painting the set for A Christmas Carol, and held three performances in the Lemoore High School Auditorium. Drawing 2 students deepened their understanding of value and contrast with scratchboard art projects. In addition, they worked in groups to create storylines that became storyboards. Advanced Art students created surrogate self-portraits using objects that represent them and their interests. In preparation for the upcoming Young Masters competition, students also learned how to frame their artworks to make them gallery-ready.

The VAPA committee has compiled a list of resources for arts educators.

The Kings County Office of Education VAPA website has resources and information about the arts in Kings County.