The Student Art Show, featuring works from Boothbay, Edgecomb and Southport schools, grades K through 12, will open May 10 at the Boothbay Region Art Foundation, 7 Townsend Avenue, Boothbay Harbor. Key Bank is sponsoring the show, which includes an exciting and diverse group of sculptures, drawings, paintings, collages, masks, jewelry, weaving, pottery and prints. Subject matter ranges from figures, self-portraits, animals, birds, fish, insects, Egyptian mummies, landscapes, still-lifes and flowers to abstract images.

Edgecomb students have been busy creating art projects that revolve around their studies of American history: they made prints and paper mache sculptures of indigenous animals and used white buttons and navy blue felt to create Eskimo blankets with animal and fish designs. In addition, they made Pennsylvania Dutch Hex signs and Native American Indian raffia baskets. Southport students painted life-size Egyptian mummies, they made Japanese dragon hats out of paper and constructed colorful rain forest birds from paper mache.

Many BRES student levels worked on three dimensional projects: first and second graders made clay amulets with majolica glazes, while eighth graders made pottery vessels and mirror frames and constructed paper mache mask-sculptures. Sixth graders worked with terra cotta clay to produce Greek-style pottery as part of an interdisciplinary unit. A second interdisciplinary unit focused on illuminated letters in conjunction with their studies of the Middle Ages. Seventh graders primarily produced two dimensional pieces. They created extremely inventive block prints from geometric and angular designs, producing different effects every time the student made ink and position choices. Third and fourth grade students created animals with collaged frames, stimulated by a trip to the Portland Museum of Art featuring the Dahlov exhibit.

The High School Introductory Art program focused on sculpture: students studied Alexander Calder and constructed wire mobiles and staybiles from various material. With each assignment, they choose an applicable artist's style to emulate. They will also be studying Rodin and sculpting hands from clay. They are creating still-life pieces, magnifying images to abstraction and making contour drawings of their hand and gesture drawings. Other students have been producing multiple colored block prints with a Japanese theme and at the end of the project they will prepare a Japanese meal. Students in jewelry and metal classes have used cast pewter to create earrings, necklaces and toga pins, while cold connections and riveting procedures have been used to construct landscapes. Intermediate and Advanced classes have studied insects: drawing them in charcoal, making wire sculptures and creating gestural drawings using rope as a tool. Students created still-life collages and have been using classmates as models to sculpt heads from clay.

The show will be open for two weekends, May 10 through 19. Gallery opening times are Fridays, 1 to 5 p.m.; Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Sundays noon to 5 p.m.