Afterschool Arts Outreach Exhibition: Dimensions of Identity

Afterschool Arts Outreach is a creative youth development program that services communities across Palm Beach County through meaningful, out-of-school arts experiences. Each year, over seven hundred participants aged 5 - 18 from eight community organizations engage in art experiences led by the exceptional and creative Norton teaching artists. These projects awaken new interests, activate exploration, promote empathy, build self-awareness, and culminate in the annual AAO student exhibition featuring artworks created by children and teens from around Palm Beach County.

Teaching artists Jose R. Mendez, Lymari Cuevas, Janelle Fulford, and Amaya Estrada were drawn to the theme of masks for their possibilities as conduits for expressions of personal identity and were specifically inspired by the masks and artworks in the special exhibition Rose B. Simpson: Journeys of Clay. Through mask making, they encouraged students to weave their family traditions, memories, experiences, and emotions onto a 3-dimensional object. By the end of this experience, students learned how to create a visual representation of their own dimensions of identity.