PACOIMA : Winning Students to Display Artwork

Thirty-two of the winning entries from the fourth annual Pacoima Pride arts project went on display Monday for a month at Van Nuys City Hall.

They will be on display at the Los Angeles Children’s Museum starting June 3.

Samples of the second-place artworks and those that received honorary mention will also be shown June 3 before the Los Angeles City Council, said Elizabeth Nielsen of Transworld Bank, which sponsors the event.

“We want to continue the tradition of showcasing the children’s artwork and at the same time want to try to educate them about local government,� Nielsen said.

The contest, which involves about 2,000 children, was conceived as a creative way of getting Pacoima’s youths to think about their community. This year’s event included children in kindergarten through eighth grade at Pacoima Elementary, Haddon Avenue Elementary and Mary Immaculate schools and Vaughn Next Century Learning Center.

Students in the past had painted portraits of Pacoima that included bullet-scarred buildings and people committing drive-by shootings on spaceships. But this year’s entries were overwhelmingly positive, said muralist Manuel Velasquez, who was one of the judges. Among this year’s works are drawings of families holding hands, green hills and smiling suns.