Five-year-old Jadyn Weber has made art projects with paper and crayons and clay before. But Sunday, for the first and perhaps only time ever, she made a work of art using a dead fish.
“I’ve never painted a real fish before,” she said as she slathered an open-eyed fish with bright green paint. “I want to make it really, really green.”
Jadyn, who was learning gyotaku, the Japanese art of fish painting, was one of the many students who attended the festival of the Foundation for Art and Music in Elementary Education, or FAME, Saturday and Sunday at Grand Wayne Center. The festival, now in its 23rd year, featured dance, reading and music performances, and displayed nearly 7,000 works of art from 125 northeast Indiana schools.
The theme of this year’s festival centered on Fort Wayne’s sister cities: Gera in Germany; Plock in Poland and Takaoka in Japan.
Inside “The Imaginarium,” a section in the middle of the festival, students cut out gingerbread dolls, decorated Easter eggs, made paper prints of painted fish and created other crafts inspired from the three cities.
The festival also featured performances by visiting artists, including an Austrian accordion player, a master of Japanese tea ceremony and a Polish children’s dance troupe.
FAME executive director Beth Peter said the festival validated student’s music and arts education and gave students a chance to be heard.
“What’s inside them is worth hearing and people are excited to hear it,” she said. “If you catch them early enough, they can really flower.”
Jodi Weber, Jadyn’s mom, said that she enjoyed seeing all the students’ artwork. With budget cuts looming in several school districts, she said she thought it was particularly important for students to still have access to art.
“You always think those will be the first to go,” she said.
It was Weber’s first time at the festival, but she said she’d be back for Jadyn, who was very pleased with her bright green fish print.
“I like to paint,” Jadyn said. “And I like art class because we get to paint whatever we want.”
