Youth art on display at Mantorville Art Guild gallery

Artwork by local students dominates the gallery walls at the Mantorville Art Guild this month.
Youth from all grade levels in area schools were invited to submit their works. The art will be on display the entire month although the reception for the young artists was held on Saturday, March 16.
Between 30 and 40 works are on display, said the Art Guild’s Theresa Hoaglund, with most of them submitted by students from Kasson-Mantorville and Byron.
The Student Art Show is a yearly event for the Guild, she said, and is held in conjunction with March Art Month for the Schools. A number of the students and their parents attended Saturday’s reception along with family, friends and the general public. Many of the artists attending the reception were from the younger grades and they were more than eager to explain their drawings.
“They (the students) put their heart and soul into these works,” said Kasson-Mantorville Middle School Art Teacher Marie Torkelson.
“I like to make up characters and things like that,” explained K-M third-grader Dylann Sanden, daughter of Aaron and Danielle Sanden. She started to draw at a young age, she explained, but now her goal is to draw “more realistically and more characters.” Her latest project, she said, is making animated episodes involving a dog.
She was drawing even in kindergarten and first grade, her father said, but for the past two years she has been creating “sketch book after sketch book.”
Payton Klevos, daughter of Greg Klevos and Lisa Westlund, is first grader at K-M, and her work showed her love of unicorns and donuts. She loves art, her mother said, and has taken art classes.
Another K-M first grader, Asher Pollert, “has always been an animal guy,” said his mother Terra Pollert. That showed in his drawing which included an eagle, fish, and a turtle.
The student artwork will be on display at the gallery now through the end of the month. Art Guild hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and  noon to 5 p.m. Sundays.