MoorArts has designed a way to showcase students’ artwork throughout town with “Art About Town.”
MoorArts is a nonprofit dedicated to supporting the fine and performing arts in the community and in schools. Diane Cairoli, visual arts trustee for the organization, explained how “Art About Town” works.
“I pick up the artwork from the various schools at different times of the year,” she said. “In January, it’s (the) elementary art rotation, followed by the UES (Upper Elementary School) and then the middle school and the high school.
“I pick up the art that the teachers gather from some of their students, and I take it to different places to showcase what wonderful work the students have been doing in public schools,” Cairoli added.
Donna Wood, owner of Health Haven on Main Street, helped initiate the project about five years ago.
“I have this great window … and I really saw the window as an opportunity to do something,” she said.
Wood and Coleman, communications trustee for MoorArts, came up with the idea to display student artwork in Wood’s store front.
“It’s been really wonderful,” Wood noted. “I’ve so missed it these last two years … You see the kids come up and see their artwork in the window, and then they get so excited, and their parents or their grandparents take pictures of them in front of the window.”
Cairoli picks up the artworks in rotations three or four times during the year, but it varies depending on how many pieces she collects. Pieces are also shown in the township’s library.
“ … I’ll often see, especially on the weekends, that other family members will come,” said Cairoli. “They’ll get pictures, they’ll ask where the students’ work (is) … and then you see them standing there with the picture with other family members. It’s very nice.”
Wood is excited to show more works in her window this summer.
“I just look forward to anything they do because it’s so interesting to me,” she said of MoorArts. “ … To see the variety of materials that they’re using … just different mediums and different ways of expression.”
Cairoli and Wood are passionate about MoorArts and Art About Town.
“It involves, of course, partnerships and community and the arts, not only the fine arts but the performing arts,” Cairoli explained. “I just feel like it’s such a supportive organization.”
“ … I had a customer that said to me … they thought it was unusual that I had art in my window,” Wood said. “I said that the way that I look at it is that I look at health holistically, and (that) art and creativity is a very, very important part of that.
“I think that really does play in for me, too, of why I display the art,” she added. “Plus it makes me really happy every morning when I walk by my window before I open up the store and look at it.”
