The Big Red Barn at Lareau Farm & Forest will soon be filled with color, imagination and what property owner and host George Schenk calls the “pure joy” of young creators as students from across the school district come together for an art show next weekend.
Running May 14 through May 24, the Harwood Unified Union School District Student Art Show brings together work from pre-K through 12th grade, representing a wide cross-section of local schools. The exhibition, open Thursday through Sunday evenings, is as much about community connection as it is about showcasing artistic talent.
For Schenk, hosting student art began with the simple observation that student art often has a short life inside school hallways. He wanted to give it something more lasting — and more public.
HONOR STUDENT ART
“It struck me that it would be nice to honor student art as real art in a real gallery, or as real as we can get here,” Schenk said in an interview. “Instead of having it just be hung up in the halls in the school, then taken down and sent home, I thought it would be nice to take it out into a more public setting.”
That shift in venue — from classroom corridors to a community gathering space — has helped elevate the work, while also broadening its audience. The show includes pieces from Crossett Brook Middle School, Fayston Elementary, Green Mountain Valley School, Harwood Union High School, Moretown Elementary, Neck of the Woods, Spring Hill School, Sugarbush Day School, Vermont Farm & Forest School, Waitsfield Elementary and Warren Elementary.
The result is a multi-generational exhibition that offers something rare: a visual timeline of artistic development.
By placing younger and older students side by side, Schenk said, the show creates opportunities for reflection and inspiration. Younger children can glimpse what their creativity might evolve into, while older students are reminded of where they started.
ONE SPACE
“What I observed was by having pre-K through 12 all in one space, that the little kids could see the development of art,” he said. “And the older kids could see maybe where their art had come from, and be reminded of that.”
