more-in The creativity of children was on display at a two-day exhibition of paintings and craft works at the Government Queen Mary Girls High School, located in the Old Town area of the city, which concluded on Friday. The vast open space between heritage building and the ones constructed in later years, served as an ‘open auditorium’ while the pillars of the old buildings and the coconut trees came in handy to tie strings across and allow the budding artists to display art and craft works. It was not one or two, but over 2,500 paintings and some craft works that were on display. The ingenuity of the budding artists was on display as the children let their imaginations run wild with the brush. Scenery, festivals, cartoon characters and fishes in various shapes and hues. The craft works include: wall hangings, Lord Ganesha heads with wool, table cloths, wall hangings and embroidery works. The highlight of the craft works is that most of them were done with discarded and waste materials like broken bangles, used paper and thread. The works are done by students of class VI to class X. Craft teacher Uma Lakshmi took special interest to motivate the girls to take up embroidery and sewing as a hobby. “Most of the students hail from poor families. Drawing and crafts help them in securing jobs easily and hence we are motivating the students to utilise their spare time in gaining expertise in these areas,” says art teacher Anil Joshi, who has been training children of various government schools in the district for the last 22 years, including the last four years at Queen Mary Girls High School. “We have been organising exhibition annually for the past four years. The children feel happy on seeing their own paintings on display and their parents appreciating them. A good number of them appeared drawing examinations conducted by the Board of Technical Education and passed out with flying colours by the time they passed their SSC examination,” he says.

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