Young Artists of McKinley County
The Young Artists of McKinley County (YAMC) Project is an effort to cultivate McKinley County’s next generation of artists by showcasing student work and providing arts education. Currently, the YAMC Project has several components including: the YAMC Display Cases, the Annual Youth Art Show at ART123 Gallery every March, monthly Family Craft Workshops during ArtsCrawl, a teaching artist program, and The Art Collective.
- youth art show
- family art workshops
- teaching artists
- the art collective
- Display cases
- Free Family Art Kits
Since 2014, gallupARTS has been celebrating Young Art Month each March by featuring student artists from public, charter, Bureau of Indian Education, private and home schools from Gallup and the surrounding areas in a month-long group show at ART123 Gallery. So far, over 2,500 student artists have participated in the Annual ART123 Gallery Youth Art Show.
As part of ArtsCrawl second Saturdays, gallupARTS hosts a family-friendly craft workshop, encouraging kids and their adults to get creative together. Each event involves an average of 100 families–that’s over 1,000 families served each year!
To help close the gap in arts education in McKinley County, gallupARTS works with community partners to offer art classes to kids, students and lifelong learners throughout the area.
For example, in 2019, gallupARTS led a month-long program at Mariano Lake Community School with teaching artist Mariea Hall. K – 2 grade students hand-built sculptures with clay and 3 – 6 grade students created mixed media watercolor paintings. This program was funded by a grant from the U.S. Bank Foundation.
Currently, gallupARTS is partnering with the Indian Health Service Division of Community Health to offer parent/child painting classes at chapter houses.
Produced iteratively in the most severely under-resourced communities within McKinley County in partnership with local service organizations, The Art Collective engages youth and families in community-oriented, collaborative art projects designed by local artists.
The first iteration of The Art Collective is integrated within nonprofit All Together in Dignity (ATD) Fourth World’s “Story Garden” program in Gamerco, NM. In fall 2019, local mixed media artist Tera Selleck, led a community beautification project designed to be intergenerational and lead to outcomes such as individual/family resiliency and agency, and neighborhood pride.
The second iteration is done in partnership with the Summer Youth Corporation’s nonprofit summer camp in Thoreau, NM. In summer 2021, Diné artist Marina Eskeets spearheaded a mural project focused on empowering Navajo youth by strengthening their connections to culture and community.
The Art Collective is funded by a grant from a NM-based foundation.
From 2013 – 2018, in partnership with schools, teachers and youth-serving programs from across McKinley County, gallupARTS put on regular student art shows in downtown display cases (on Second Street across from Camille’s Sidewalk Café). Displays have included hundreds of papier mache ants, self-portraits, poetry and sewing projects. IFrom 2015 – 2018, the YAMC display cases exhibited over 1,100 student artists from over 4 dozen schools/classes.
gallupARTS’ Free Family Art Kit program developed in response to Covid. From 2020 – 2022, 3,250 kits designed by 7 local artists were provided to 1,000+ families through three rounds of distributions.
Find a project inventory with downloadable instructions at www.galluparts.org/familyartkits
