Native American Portraiture Comes Alive In The Nation’s Capital

 

Students From Duxbury’s Harwood Union High School

Take Their Art To Washington

 

(FRIDAY, April 4) – Sixteen advanced-drawing students from Harwood Union High School in Duxbury, Vt., will travel to Washington next week, where they have landed a prime location in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol to display artwork from a semester-long exploration of Native American culture.  

 

The exhibit, from Monday, April 7, to Friday, April 11, in the Russell Senate Building’s rotunda, is sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who will also host a reception in his Washington office for the students on Tuesday, April 8.  

 

The idea is the inspiration of their art teacher, Carol Gargon.  When she visited a Native American reservation in New Mexico, “Gar” -- as her students call her -- was fascinated by the passion and the integration of art and culture.  She decided to create an art curriculum integrating Native American culture into the study of portraiture.  The students were required to research various tribes, their culture and their environs, and then to draw portraits that depicted their findings.  What began as a drawing exercise ended up becoming a semester-long art project.  The exhibit in the Russell Building, the oldest of the three Senate office buildings, will consist of black and white Native American portraits on canvas.   

 

Leahy has long supported local artists and the arts.  This week he was awarded the 2008 National Award for Congressional Arts Leadership from the Americans for the Arts and the United States Conference of Mayors for distinguished service on behalf of the arts.  As a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee he has consistently supported the National Endowment for the Arts, and as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee he has led on copyright and intellectual property issues important to artists.  Leahy himself is an avid and accomplished photographer whose photos have been featured in national publications and exhibited in galleries throughout Vermont.  Leahy also is the chief sponsor of the Artist-Museum Partnership Act, which would allow artists to claim a fair market value tax deduction when donating their work for the public to enjoy.

 

“Vermont has hundreds of local artists, and I’m glad for this chance to share 17 of them with the rest of the country,” said Leahy.  “Art can be both a mirror and a prism, and this project shows that it also can be an effective teaching tool.  I’m delighted their project will be capped by this field trip, and I look forward to seeing their work in person.”

 

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