Festival brings together students, artists, community

PALMER — With a bit of pink tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth and lines of concentration on her forehead, Ali Krediet considers her next brush stroke.

“This is cool,” the 10-year-old Finger Lake Elementary student said while attempting the oriental art of ink drawing called sumi-é. “I’ve never done it before, but it’s fun.”

Krediet was among hundreds of Valley students, parents and teachers to pack into Colony Middle School Friday for an evening of artistic expression and fun at the Valley Festival of the Arts. She was parked at Suzanne Bach’s station learning the art form.

Sumi-é is one-stroke painting, said Bach, who teaches art at Mat-Su College. “You think about what it’s going to look like without ever making a stroke, then with instruction you follow your teacher and learn how to do different movements.”

Bach was excited for Krediet, who made a nearly flawless bamboo stalk with her first stroke.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think it was absolutely spectacular and meets a need in the community,” she said about participating in the festival. “I’ve done this for six years. I like to be part of the community arts, contribute to spreading the word about the arts.”

Also spreading the word is CMS music teacher Tobias Lambert, who has put on the festival seven of the past eight years. The only hiccup was one year when he had to have an emergency appendectomy.

Bringing artists like Bach, the Valley Arts Alliance, local dance groups and schools together serves two purposes, Lambert said.

“One, it’s a way for us to show the community what’s available here in the Valley in terms of the arts,” Lambert said. “We bring so many groups in and we try to vary it every year. The second reason is it’s a fund-raiser for our school.”

Money raised from the festival is used for scholarships to help students attend music camps and other activities, he said.

While an ensemble from Finger Lake Elementary entertained an attentive audience with a performance on various percussion instruments, kids and adults watched young dancers, viewed work on display by local artists and even learned to make intricate origami animals.

Another goal of the festival is to show the impact arts have on a child’s overall education, Lambert said.

“The arts can tie to so many other things,” he said. “In ancient Greek history, only three things were taught — math, music and philosophy. This is a chance to bridge that part of the brain they don’t get to work with that often, and it takes a lot of practice to bridge that creative, artistic side.”

Chelsea Heintzman, 8, was parked at one of the art tables preparing to draw.

Although her school, Finger Lake, doesn’t have an organized art program, her class does art on Fridays, she said.

“I like drawing and painting,” she said. “I like that you can make cool pictures and stuff. I like to draw dolphins because that’s my favorite animal. Sometimes I draw them a lot in the water and sometimes I draw them with sunsets.”

Her mother, Sarah Heintzman, was impressed with the festival.

“I think this is wonderful,” she said. “It’s interesting to get out and see what different types of arts there are. A lot of people think of art as drawing or as music, but there’s more to it than that.”

In the gymnasium, 11-year-old CMS student Alyssa Schoenenberger was all smiles and red cheeks after performing an energetic dance routine.

Art teaches people how to express their feelings, she said. “And that’s important, because if you’re mad, you can just draw how you’re feeling.”

Although she appeared cool and collected, Schoenenberger admitted she gets nervous before a performance.

“I’m just having fun and doing what I like to do, and yes, I do get nervous,” she said. “I just go out there and act like it’s practice.”

She’s had plenty of practice time to draw upon, said mother Susie Schoenenberger.

“I have two kids who dance,” she said. “My son’s been dancing since he was 4 and she’s been dancing since she was 2. It teaches them how to express themselves.”

Her son, Joshua, is a 15-year-old Colony High School student with big dreams for a career in dance. A couple years ago, he auditioned for the Broadway musical “Billy Elliot.”

“He auditioned and went through the process for a year and a half,” she said. “He made it to the final (auditions), but by that time he ended up being too tall.”

The audition process “was amazing,” Joshua said. “The bad thing was I got too tall. The audition was really hard, actually.”

He’s a fan of kids being involved in artistic pursuits.

“It teaches them to stay out of drugs and stuff,” Joshua said. ‘That’s what I like about it. It takes your mind off it. It teaches you how to move and interact with people.”

It’s not easy for a teen boy to be a dancer, his mother said. Sometimes when he is teased about it, she said her son has a great comeback.

“One day they’ll see me on TV and say, ‘Hey, I used to tease that kid,’” she said.

For Joshua, his passion for his art is what keeps him going.

“I’m doing what I love to do,” he said. “And I guess they’re just jealous because I get all the girls.”

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.