Miniature trash skyscrapers overlooked trash neighborhoods perched on steep trash hillsides in the Clarence Lobo Elementary School Auditorium Friday -- shoebox and soda carton tract homes and commercial centers painstakingly crafted by hundreds of students.
Kids from kindergarten through the fifth grade built display -- called Trash City -- to learn not only about reuse and recycling, but also to learn art and creativity. Parents led by artist Lyn Hiner put together an art curriculum for the students in the face of school budgets that have eviscerated art programs.
"I have a passion for making sure our kids have art," Hiner said. "It teaches them problem solving, it teaches them to work within boundaries."
She and other parents in the Clarence Lobo Parent-Teacher Association put together the CRE8 program, which stands for "Creative Right-Brain Expression" which puts together art activities eight times during the school year.
Other projects on display included a giant Jackson Pollack-style painting to which every student contributed in a lesson about abstract expressionism. Other walls in the auditorium were plastered with vibrant watercolors which the kids painted in their impressionism lessons. Still others displayed intricate mosaics fashioned with different-colored beans glued to paper.
Hiner called the program a grass-roots movement, run by all parent volunteers.
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