SFUSD Arts Festival

Wednesday morning in front of San Francisco's City Hall, there were speeches and performances heralding the upcoming SF Unified School District Arts Festival, which will be taking place at the Asian Art Museum starting Saturday, March 2nd and running through Sunday, March 10th (click here for a schedule).



There were a number of self-congratulatory speeches about the value of the arts in San Francisco's public schools from politicians that included Superintendent Richard Carranza, School Board member Hydra Mendoza, and Board of Supervisors President David Chiu above.



Meanwhile, the children from Bessie Carmichael Elementary School were yawning with boredom as they patiently sat on the Polk Street stairs of City Hall as the adults droned on.



Finally, the children were allowed to sing an amusing ditty about eating right and studying and exercising...



...with a few of them above looking ready to step into the new Broadway production of Annie at a moment's notice.



After the children's song, a band from Burton High School stationed across the street in the plaza began a short concert that was sensational fun...



...led by a young conductor who looked to be a fellow student.



After the concert, the rally broke up but the Burton teenagers hung out in the plaza...



...and at one goofy moment broke into a free-form dance.



It was a delightful novelty seeing so many young people in the Civic Center neighborhood, and there is hope that the public Ruth Asawa School of the Arts will finally move out of its location at the top of Portola and O'Shaughnessy and move into a planned facility at 130 Van Ness next to the new SFJAZZ Center.



In the meantime, check out the young performing talent this coming week at the Asian Art Museum. According to the SFUSD website, "All performances take place in Samsung Hall of the Asian Art Museum. Admission to the Asian Art Museum is free to those coming to the SFUSD Arts Festival." So just tell them at the front door that you are there to cheer on the kids.

Open Enrollment Agony at SFUSD

A large line of people formed early this morning in the rain for the first day of Open Enrollment at the San Francisco Unified School District headquarters.



The agonizingly slow line went down Franklin Street...



...and rounded the corner onto Fulton Street.



I asked a few people near the front of the line how long they had been waiting. "Well, it's 12:30 now and we showed up about 8:00..."



The signage explaining the process was in barely comprehensible English, so I went to the SFUSD website which wasn't much more help:

"Open Enrollment begins on June 1, 2011. At that time, any student may be assigned immediately into a school with openings that does not have any Amended Choice Requests pending for the August Placement Period. Students who receive an assignment through Open Enrollment may still opt to submit an Amended Choice request for the August Placement Period as long as it is submitted by July 8th."

From all accounts, there's no bureaucracy quite like educational bureaucracy. I hope everyone in line manages to get in.

SFUSD Arts Festival Postscript

The San Francisco Unified School District's Art Festival was held a couple of weeks ago at the Asian Art Museum, where I caught up with a few more artists in an overstuffed room next to the gift shop.



This included Tiger above by the precociously gifted Aema Westphal, who is a first grader at Alvarado Elementary and daughter of proud father and music blogger Cedric Westphal.



Nearby was the wonderful oil painting Rhythm by Moet Kurakata, a senior at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts. The painting teacher, Phyllis Ciment, must be some kind of wizard based on the extraordinary quality of her students' work at this year's festival.



Upstairs in Samsung Hall, student bands, dance troupes, theatre groups, and choruses offered a series of performances all week, including the final "show chorus" offering from Mercy High School, "a Catholic College Preparatory High School for Young Women."



They were cute and hilarious in their choreographed moves. Here's a wish that they return to the neighborhood next year.



There was one strange detail, though, in that half the participants were from private schools in San Francisco. How did they become part of the "San Francisco Unified School District"?

2014 SFUSD Arts Festival: 3D Art

the San Francisco Unified School District's annual arts festival at the Asian Art Museum has come and gone with next to no publicity, but keep your eyes peeled for it next March because the event is enormously stirring. Sculpture this year came in every media imaginable, including Ruth Asawa/School of the Arts senior Lori Bato's Exo-tic Lifeforms above with teacher Scot Bishop.



Surrounding the second floor stairway at the museum were a number of collections, including a pair of Fish by Dylan Kelleman and Jake Saiz, students in the Buena Vista Horace Mann Elementary School class of Bob Armstrong.



Elementary school students of Sheila Ghedini at Cathedral School created Cool Creeper above, a set of robots with electrical eyes.



Lucy Montgomery, an eighth grader at Rooftop Mayeda with teacher C. Sugawara, created the touching diorama above, Day of the Dead: To My Grandfather.



One of the more startling displays was a collection of ceramic Babies by third graders from New Traditions Elementary in Meg Sandine's class.



There was nothing particularly cute about these babes, possibly because the young artists were still close enough to their own infancy. They seemed to capture the essence of babyhood from the inside, as in the piece above by Cassady Komater.

2014 SFUSD Arts Festival: 2D Art

For the second year in a row, the San Francisco Unified School District is holding a nine-day arts festival at the Asian Art Museum, with drawings, sculpture, and musical performances scattered throughout the building. The first floor is where the 2D art has been installed, including Horse in a Forest, made with tempera above by Elena Berenstein, Grade 6, studying with teacher Anna Pevzner at Kruzhok Visual Arts.



The bulk of the paintings and drawings are in the "education room" off the main lobby, and though Gertrude Stein and The Louvre liked to cram art onto their walls all the way to the ceiling, the arrangement here is not doing the young artists any favors.



Thankfully, a selection of works has been installed more gracefully in the lobby near the Yoga special exhibit, and some of the pieces are precociously amazing, such as the Hockney Style Landscape, an acrylic by Aidan Dowling, Grade 4, studying with Gloria Carillo at Claire Lilienthal School.



10th grader Brittny Farmer-Burkett used moveable cut paper to create Temptrests of Hearts at Mission High School with teacher Shannon Larson.



Molly Garrett, Grade 7 at Buena Vista/Horace Mann under teacher Megan McMahon created the exquisite chalk pastel above of Ramon the Pelican.



There were a number of remarkable self-portraits, including 12th grader Ada Chen above from the Asawa School of the Arts under Pyllis Ciment.



Charles Alston painted the Self Portrait above in oil as an 11th grader at Asawa School of the Arts with teacher Tom Mogensen.



A startlingly perfect watercolor, Trees at Dark, was created by 3rd grader Vitesse Disney from Argonne Elementary with Ms. Cox as the teacher.



Be sure not to miss the Book Arts display case at the north end of the lobby where Lowell High 12th grader Qing Qing Su has created a brilliantly political piece called Whitewash under teacher Patricia Copeland.



Admission is free at the museum all this week, with musical performances every morning in the large Samsung Hall on the second floor. There is also an awards party involving a number of performances this evening (Thusday) starting at 4:45 PM to 8:30. Check it out.

San Francisco Student Artists at the Asian

Sunday at the Asian Art Museum was a mob scene with Free First Sunday admission, the Terracotta Warriors exhibit, and students from Washington High School, Hamlin School, and Presidio Middle School giving musical performances in Samsung Hall.



In one half of the ground floor lobby of the museum and along the loggia on the second floor, student artwork is being displayed as part of the SFUSD Arts Festival. The oil painting above, Hard Day, is by Declan Fitzpatrick, a senior at the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts.



Leon Xu, another senior student of teacher Phyllis Clement at Ruth Asawa, is represented by the gorgeous oil painting above entitled Moving On.



An anonymous student from Presidio Middle School is one of the featured collage artists who conjured up the Fantasy Bird above under teacher Lynn Lewis.



Jessica Yan Ruan, a senior from George Washington High School, created the striking Year of the Snake print above while studying with teacher Susan Witka.



There was a whole wall filled with Frida Kahlo portraits from the fifth grade class of Meg Sandine at New Tradition Elementary School.



From the same school, there was more Fridamania in the form of mixed media sculptures, including Frida Kahlo in Bed above by third grader Caleb Pike. The exhibit will stay up through this weekend, so check it out for free, and catch a performance in Samsung Hall while you are at it.

The Kids Are All Artists

The San Francisco Unified School District launched their week-long Arts Festival at the Asian Art Museum last Saturday for the third year in a row. There are short musical performances in Samsung Hall daily by everyone from Presidio Middle School Vocal above to Ruth Asawa School of the Arts World Music.



The only problems are the echoing acoustics of the high-ceilinged room and the scores of parents brandishing their mobile devices to capture it all digitally, a weird discourtesy to their performing children.



Outside Samsung Hall on the second floor, there is a display of student sculptures and ceramics, including a collection of handmade lamps from Mission High School which were fun and beautiful.



Downstairs in one of the light courts, surrounded by the Japanese pleasure quarter exhibit, Seduction, there is a strong exhibit of student art from around the city, including What Can I Say from grades 4-5 at the SF Community School, led by teachers Christy Bratt-Porter and Terycka Garcia.



Inside each painted/screened cardboard box is a card with typewritten text written by each student.



Politics was prevalent in the selections this year, such as Oppression above by Lowell High School 11th-grader Sophie Qin above, with teacher Kirsten Janssen.



This was especially true in the works from International High School teacher Eva Strohmeier's students. Noah Brown, Grade 12, had a pair of paintings called Drones that were disturbing and eye-catching...



...while 11th-grader Noah DeWald used watercolors in a brilliant evocation of the construction of a GMO Tomato.



Whether or not I Contact by 12-grader Will Brown has a political content, it was no surprise that the large, folding charcoal drawing was another one of Eva's students.



Teacher Tom Mogensen at the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts was another standout. He mentored two great oil paintings, the Self Portrait above by 11th-grader Airi Miyajii and the beautifully evocative Sleeping by 11th-grader Justin Yee below.



The Asian Art Museum is essentially a free admission zone this week if you pick up a pass from the SFUSD table set up in the front of the building, and you can take in Seduction while you are at it.