Meadows School displays children’s artwork

Saturday, April 29, 2006 | 7:27 a.m.

Samantha Seiff has taken courses at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and has worked alongside a socially motivated contemporary artist in his studio there.

She's somewhat versed in Monet and Van Gogh, but her exposure and appreciation lie mostly in the confines of late 20th-century art.

Still, at the age of 6, she's well beyond her peers.

"She feels a great sense of accomplishment," said Samantha's mother, Cathy, standing outside her daughter's kindergarten class at The Meadows School. "She has a real passion for it."

Artwork by Samantha and other students from the art-friendly Meadows School will be displayed today and Sunday at the Trails Village Center. "Art Walk: In the Heart of Summerlin" will be from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

We're not talking traditional refrigerator art or youth angst spattered on construction paper. There are no young Pollocks or emerging Basquiats. Kindergartners and elementary students are learning to paint carefully constructed still lifes, landscapes and scenes of Italian villas.

The founding mistress at the Summerlin school, popular among the ranks of Las Vegas executives, celebrities and power brokers, said the arts is fully ingrained in the school's curriculum.

For exercises and instruction in applied fine arts, school officials turn to its volunteers, including Italian-born realist painter Giovanna Raccosta, who teaches at the school and at her home.

"Some kids like more abstract," said Raccosta, whose portraits of school founder Carolyn Goodman and Jill and Frank Fertitta hang in the school. "Some kids like more classical."

The students, she said, hope their art will bring them their own identity. "They want to do something with their lives. They want to be rewarded for what they're doing and not live in their parents' shadows."

Indeed. Fourth grader Brianna Ruvo's last name probably sounds familiar because her father is Larry Ruvo, senior managing director of Southern Wine & Spirits of Nevada, and main donor for the Lou Ruvo Alzheimer's Center, which will break ground in August.

The young Ruvo says she likes to draw landscapes, and has been studying atmospheric and traditional perspective and shading. She's still finding her own style, takes classes with Raccosta and another private teacher, and when she finishes a painting she hangs it in her room at home.

Occasionally Ruvo brings in her work and gives artist lectures - discussing subject matter, brushes and brush strokes - to her young classmates.

Her family, she said, is considering turning an upstairs area into an art gallery. She prefers figurative works.

"I've been to the Vatican in Italy," she said, sounding humbled by the experience. "I've seen art of Leonardo da Vinci."

She said she was a fan of Michelangelo's work because "they look so real. They're looking at you and you feel like you're in the painting."

Parents have expressed delight by the strength of the Meadows' art program.

"We expected the Meadows to have strong traditional academics, but with the art program, we've been surprised," said Cathy Seiff, standing before a wall of still-life hydrangea paintings by kindergartners.

A donated work by Alexandra Nechita, the Romanian-born artist who garnered acclaim when she was 8 years old, is framed and hung on a hallway wall as inspiration for the students.

"Our program is for academically ambitious and able children," lower school director Isabelle Holman said while strolling down the quiet carpeted hallways.

Will the young Seiff be too attached to her artwork to want to sell any this weekend?

"I would assume she would sell it," Cathy Seiff said. "She has a lot of artwork."