The Holter Shares Helena Students' Art Skills

By Lilly LeGrand

Every year in the spring at the Holter Museum, art teachers gather their students’ art projects and put them on display for Youth Electrum; from cute colorful Kindergarten paper crafts to thought-provoking High School paintings, this year there were many varieties of art for viewers to see. The exhibit took over the Holter on April 19th and finished up on May 17th.

While the exhibit was up a few students from Capital earned awards for the pieces. Beth Raymer, Senior, won the Best Painting award for her painting called Seven Days A Week. The painting depicts a head that is split in half, eyes on a stick are in the center, with a strip that has the days of the week; Saturday and Sunday have smiley faces while the other days have X’s through them.

The tradition of Youth Electrum started 38 years ago, and it was originally held at the Civic Center, before the Holter Museum was even around. It used to showcase artwork from all ages, and it even had food items and music displayed. The Youth Electrum was started by the Helena Arts Council, which was an organization in town that did all kinds of arts programming and events, including founding the Holter Museum of Art in 1988. After the Museum opened, the Electrum, as it was called then, was moved to the Holter.

Sondra Hines, Curator of Education at the Holter, says “We receive everything from drawings, watercolor paintings, acrylic paintings, collage, photography, digital films, clay sculpture, woodwork, metal work, mixed media pieces, chair sculptures…anything that an artist can create with might be represented in Youth Electrum. We have had 12 ft. towers welded out of metal and tiny miniature paintings that were just beautiful. We love the collaborative student work we often get from the elementary aged artists.” She also stated, “I cannot recall a time when we have turned any student away from participating. Space is our biggest concern, making room for all the wonderful and amazing pieces that Helena students and their teachers create is our biggest challenge. ”

When first entering the museum, visitors were hit dead center with a sugar skull statue that beckons them to come take a look at the high school art. Cool colors covered the walls while a few splashes of red and white added more to the scene. Paintings, drawings, sculptures, and paper cut-outs depicted scenes of love and hate, fiction and nonfiction, and food and people; each piece suggested a small story. There were also photos that lined the walls with funny stories of pets and stuffed animals.

In the middle school section, various paintings were displayed on the walls; some showed nature scene while others showed a young preteen-teens’ emotions. The colors have brightened up a little , but there is still the rawness of their feelings.

As visitors wandered through the exhibit, they would start to notice that the colors continued to brighten up until they were surrounded with bright happy colors and playful monster sculptures. There were happy Dr. Seuss houses, little paper birds, and cheery rainbows that fill up the walls.

One thing to note about the art was the contrast of the art; the kindergarteners’ art was cheery and care free, the middle schoolers’ was unsure and wandering, while the high schoolers’ was questioning and even depressed. Each art piece showed what each age group is going through and how they see the world at the moment; the kindergarteners’ are still learning and are in their own worlds, middle schoolers are becoming aware of the world but are still in their own, while the high schoolers are very close to knowing what is going on and the world they believed in is gone- for some.

Overall Youth Electrum was a fun and delightful exhibit and it will be nice to see what is displayed next year at the Holter.