Manor postcard scenes reborn in young artists’ renderings

Old town vistas come to life in showing at Peez Leweez Café

By RICHARD A. ROSS

LIVINGSTON MANOR, NY — For high school art teacher Jessica Mall, now in her second year at Livingston Manor, the challenge is to inspire her students to bring art to life. Mall knows that art is not merely a subject to be taught in school, but more significantly, an expressive outlet for people to externalize their innermost thoughts and feelings.

For teenagers whose emotional inner lives are marked by an ongoing search for an identity, a better understanding of where they come from is key to developing a clearer sense of themselves in time and space. Such knowledge has the added benefit of enhancing a sense of history of the town they have called home for all, or nearly all ,of their lives.

As Mall perused an album of old postcards, collected by her grandfather John Mears, that depict scenes of Livingston Manor buildings and vistas some of which date back more than one hundred years—the idea of offering students a relevant and dynamic end-year project was born.

The Livingston Manor graduate, who has a deep and abiding love for art, always has a larger goal in mind that ranges beyond helping her students to develop their craft.

What Mall seeks are ways for her students to utilize their developing understanding of perspective, color and scale to create something that is personally expressive and unique.

Bringing the album to her drawing and painting elective, she asked the students, who range from sophomores to seniors, what they thought about reproducing one of the postcards in a medium of their own preference.

The kids loved the idea, and began to look deeply into the scene of their choosing. What medium should they use? How could they mix colors that would realistically mirror those appearing in the original?

As to scale, would the image be more or less effective if it were made larger?

If the measure of valuable education is in its real-life applicability, Mall’s challenge to her students to recreate an image of bygone days from their own town resonates with personal, artistic and historical value.

The results are on display at Peez Leweez Café in an exhibit Mall has named “Blasts from the Past.” Pictured in close proximity to the originals are the student renderings, which Mall says her students regard with great pride. “It’s beyond anything I could imagine,’ she notes. “They’ve become historians of a place they’ve always lived in.” Mall chose a dozen of the best pieces for the gallery display. Having their work on exhibit is affirming and exciting for the young artists.

For Peez Leweez, it’s yet another opportunity to display the talent of locals, enhancing the already cozy atmosphere by enlivening the walls with vivid eye-catching artwork.

The current display will grace the walls of the café through May. To see the original postcards and the student renderings, click here.