Pleasant View Students add art to local Center

 


Students from Pleasant View Magnet School
draw the outline of a mural

About Pleasant View

  • Pleasant View Magnet School for Visual and Performing Arts, 4501 Pleasant Grove Road, is one of nine schools and programs offering themed learning environments in Lansing School District.
  • About 485 kindergarten through
    eighth-grade students are enrolled at the school, which offers such classes as dance, sculpture and piano, along with regular
    state-mandated curriculum.
  • For more information, visit http://pleasantview.lansingschools.net or
    call 325-6859

Jazz greats, gardens among mural images at South Side Coalition

  Some Lansing visual arts students are getting their own canvas in the community.
  Pleasant View Magnet School often finds an audience for music and drama productions, but kids devoted to drawing have few outside outlets.
  That was until they found South Side Community Coalition.  After a welcome invitation to unleash creativity, white walls inside the coalition's center are fast becoming colorful murals.
  "We can actually show our work to people," said a 11 year old, who's adding details to a garden scene at the center's entrance.  "We don't have a dance to put on.  It's just a drawing."
  Yet the project has been much more.
  Sixth and seventh graders in Shirley Hazlett's art class, an elective at Pleasant View, prepared for weeks. 

After deciding to feature civil rights leaders and jazz musicians, they put visions on paper, visited the job space and met with their client.
  "We believe they're going to be professionals," Hazlett said.  "So we're treating this as a professional venture."
  And so far, South Side youth director Yolanda Sherrer is a satisfied customer.  She wanted to add more color and meaning to the center while expanding local kids' opportunities.
  South Side runs after-school and summer programs for children, such as tutoring, games and movies.
  It will hold a grand opening to show off the murals in a few months.
  Sherrer said she hopes the project is the start of a long-term partnership.
  "It will remind the community that we're here," she said.  "This is going to be their art gallery".
For more pictures click "here"

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Lansing State Journal, 3/21/06, by Nicole Geary, photo by Tony Richards