Yelm High School’s campus will be filled with both visual and performative art during its first ever art walk from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., Friday, April 12.
Approximately 130 pieces of visual art from students throughout Yelm Community Schools will be showcased in the YHS commons, while 15 student performers will entertain attendees in the performing arts center.
The displayed visual art is a collection of artwork from various art classes within all nine district schools. Attendees can enjoy drawings, paintings, ceramics, poetry and more. Performative arts will include singing, dancing and instruments.
YHS’ first art walk was the brainchild of Associated Student Body (ASB) advisor Kristin Wolf, who was inspired to give students who aren’t involved in athletics or clubs the opportunity to receive praise for their work from the community. Wolf, along with YHS art teacher Taylor Gubser and the ASB students, have been making her vision a reality for over four months.
“I’ve been thinking about this for like three years. I told my students at the ASB boot camp this summer about it, and they said, ‘Yes, let’s do it,’ ” Wolf said. “I reached out to all the art teachers and tried to make it as easy on them as possible. We didn’t have a special theme. I told them to just pull art that they’re already doing in their classes.”
Wolf added that she wanted the event to include more than the visual aspect of an art walk, citing YHS’ talented pool of students as a reason to broaden the parameters.
“We have a lot of very talented students, and I think planning for this art show definitely brought that even more to my attention,” she said. “It’s an opportunity to really showcase not just to our students, but to our community and our parents that we have a lot of really talented kids here.”
While Wolf described herself as “the child that didn’t get the artsy stuff,” she was heavily exposed to art as an adolescent. Her mother was an art teacher and her father was an artist, and she recalled enjoying art museums in Texas and while studying abroad in Europe. She aims to take what she observed as a child and as a student and bring it to Yelm.
“We aren’t really displaying art as much here as I want to, so I want to make this an annual event and something that’s going to grow. Each year will be a little bit bigger,” Wolf said. “Eventually, there will be places for people from the community to go do art things and there will be food trucks. It’ll be like a big party.”
Wolf lauded Gubser’s involvement in setting up the inaugural art walk event, which is free for everyone.
“She has been a really huge help. We’ve basically partnered with this. I gave her my idea and my vision, and together we made this vision happen,” Wolf said. “We wanted people to have the experience as if they were in a famous art gallery but at our school.”
