Quest students display art masterpieces

Published 6:00 am Wednesday, December 5, 2007

This week at Alexander Junior High School, the seventh-gradegifted Quest class will be presenting an art museum composed ofpaintings and abstract sculptures done by students.

The students’ works are reproductions of the world’smasterpieces by artists such as Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso,recreated with various painting techniques such as finger painting,using brushes and even socks.

Seventh-grader Laurel Smith explained the process instraight-forward terms.

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“We found a picture that we liked, then we painted it,” shesaid. “They’re all famous paintings.”

Quest teacher Robin Furr offered a more detailedexplanation.

“The students researched and selected a painting of theirchoice,” Furr said. “They found out that the choices they made werejust as popular as those favored by the public. We have eight vanGoghs and four Picassos.”

Furr said the students, using small pictures printed from theInternet, expanded the pictures with a mathematical grid to stretchthem to exact proportion on a 3-feet by 5-feet canvas. The pictureswere then brought to life with acrylic paint.

Furr stressed she was not an art teacher; Alexander Junior Highhas “an outstanding art program.” She elected to have her studentscreate the paintings as part of the gifted class curriculum becauseof “all the artistic processes that go on between your ears.”

“If you were to go to art school in college, the first thingthey would tell you to do is copy the masters,” Furr said. “That’swhy I had them go after artists like van Gogh and Picasso.”

Quest’s artwork will be on display for the public during schoolhours until Friday at 3 p.m. Once the paintings and sculptures aretaken down, the students will take them home to keep. Furr saidseveral of her former students still display their paintings intheir homes.

There are 31 of 224 seventh graders, about 14 percent, enrolledin Quest at Alexander Junior High School.