WASILLA — To understand the value of the arts in primary education, sit in on a class with Lynn Marie Naden.

Naden, a sculptor from Homer, is a long-time participant in the Artists in Schools program. Today is the last day of Naden’s two-week residency at Shaw Elementary School, but she will leave behind a legacy of clay, paint and inspiration.

Naden co-hosts classes with Kim Reid, Shaw’s permanent art teacher. Walking into Reid’s class on Thursday, the students’ faces were lit with excitement, contrasting the ghostly glow of the computer lab two doors down.

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The students were creating self-portraits using modeling clay and popsicle sticks, an introspective task for a young child. The clay heads turn out to look amazingly life-like.

“Your face is the thing your most familiar with,” said Naden. “So its no wonder they look so true to form.”

Naden shows the students how to pinch the clay to make the nose and eye sockets, how to use a dowel to form the mouth and how to put the head on the popsicle stick body.

This form is fired in the schools make-shift kiln, the oven in the staff lounge, then returned to the student for a paper shirt, yarn hair and a hat made from the tip of a glove finger.

“I want to show the kids something they could do at home with materials they buy in the community,” said Naden. “What’s the point of giving them specialized skills they can’t use without specialized equipment?”

Everyone of the more than 500 students at Shaw Elementary will make a figure, as will all the staff and faculty. But these figures are just an addition to the main piece the school has been creating for the last two weeks.

The students have been focused on creating four representations of the Valley in the four seasons. The diorama-like displays feature Hatcher Pass in the winter, the Wasilla shopping district in the spring, Wasilla Lake in the summer and the state fair in the fall.

Because the school does not have a kiln, Naden and Reid decided to do a project using bisque tiles. The kindergartners and first-graders sponge-painted the background tiles and the second- and third-graders created trees for the foreground. The fourth- and fifth-graders created clay figures to populate the scene.

“There’s no way I could have done this without Lynn,” said Reid who is also the PE teacher for Shaw. “It would be so hard to do this with an everyday class. She brings not just her expertise, but her time as well.”

Each scene is four feet long, requiring extra time for the project. When Reid goes back to the gym, and there are no students around, Naden will have constructed the buildings and painted the landscape. The 16-foot-long finished project will forever be installed in the library.

“I’ve done similar things like this with other schools,” said Naden, “but nothing like this.”

For her part, Naden looks at the Artists in Schools program as a way to support herself through the winter and a vacation from the vacuum of her studio.

“I get so much satisfaction from working with kids. They have real enthusiasm for art.” Naden said. “Besides, I have my own art show up. I brought all my own stuff to sell and have done pretty well.”

Besides being able to show their students something they made 30 years ago, Naden hopes she will inspire students now.

On her biography on the Alaska State Council on the Arts Web site, Naden writes, “It is my intention that we all walk away from the experience richer and gain a little more knowledge about ourselves and the world around us, using art as the vehicle.”

Judging simply by facial expressions, the students in the art class were having a much richer experience than their counterparts in the computer lab.

Contact Todd Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or (907) 352-2252.