Rafael Blanco, Instructor and Program Director at Feather River College's Art Department, is proud to present the work of his students for a juried group show. "They've worked really hard this semester, and the paintings show it," Blanco says. Student assignments ranged in theme from surrealism to photo realism, allowing the artists to explore a variety of moods and techniques. Featured student work will also be hanging at the Plumas County Museum in the Mezzanine Gallery for the month of May.

The Artists in Schools (AIS) program is a hands-on art learning experience sponsored by Plumas Arts in partnership with the Plumas County Office of Education and the California Arts Council. Offered for more than 20 years to every K-6 public school classroom in the county, the AIS program has put visual art, dance, and music teaching artists in front of hundreds of local school children. This year, workshops were offered in dance with Ramona Eaglesmith, music with Doug Sheehy, and visual arts with Becky Compton, Heather Upton, Rebecca Glaspy, and Lenora Herndon.

Feather River College art students will show their works at Plumas Arts Gallery for the month of May.

AIS art instructor Rebecca Glaspy has been in Emily Read's 5th grade classroom at Quincy Elementary working with students on drawing fundamentals. Her students have learned about shadow and highlight, contour drawing, charcoal sketching, and perspective. They collaborated on a large, multi-paneled drawing where each student drew just one square from a black and white photo. The pieces were then assembled together, an image of a face coalescing from the fragments. FRC art instructor Rafael Blanco commented, "I was excited to see my daughter learning perspective drawing in this program. Drawing skills are an important foundation for later learning."

Quincy and Portola High School art students, under the instruction of Danielle Frid, have completed some amazing pieces for the show. The students have painted with acrylic on canvas, done astonishingly lifelike charcoal sketches, drawn colorful pet portraits, and even decorated a pair of sneakers with Dr. Seuss inspired illustrations.