Wednesday, March 20, 2013

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"?