Art Students Color Downtown Houston

Kira Slentz

Art students from Spring Woods High and Landrum Middle schools were among the young artists who turned dedicated downtown street spaces into big, colorful art squares on Sunday, Nov. 23.

Spring Woods High art teacher Crystal Fiocchi joined featured student artists Kira Slentz and Lilya Gehman, plus other students, on a school bus that headed downtown to the annual Via Colori Street Painting Festival. (See Houston Chronicle story below for more details.)

Spring Woods High students completed four art squares, and students from across the district volunteered at the event, which supports The Center for Hearing and Speech in Houston. This year’s festival was delayed one day due to rain.

Landrum Middle School art teacher Andres Bautista, who has been involved in the festival for many years, also attended the festival with students, including many of his former students who are now Northbrook High School alumni.

Lilya Gehman

The Houston Chronicle posted this report on its website involving the high school and middle school, and featured art students:

Spring Woods High junior Kira Slentz was selected as this year's Via Colori Apprendista artist for the annual downtown street painting festival – Via Colori Street Painting Festival.

Spring Woods High senior Lilya Gehman was also selected to participate in designing one of the the SWHS 10-by-10-foot group squares. Multiple SWHS students created the final street painting masterpieces.

Spring Woods High School took a bus of students to the festival on Sunday since the festival was canceled on Saturday due to the weather, said Crystal Fiocchi, Spring Woods High School Art Department chair.

Landrum Middle School also had an art square on Sunday as well, she said.

"Spring Woods High School completed four total squares at the festival and we had students from all across the district at the event volunteering their artistic talents to help support The Center for Hearing and Speech in Houston," Fiocchi said in an email. "It took many, many talented artist hands to get all the squares complete in just one day!"

The Via Colori Street Painting Festival is a free, normally two-day event that attracts up to 25,000 visitors annually. The streets of downtown Houston become a giant canvas during the festival for artists that range from students to professional street painters from across the nation and Mexico.

The theme for this year's festival was "The Art of Sound." Street artists young and old drew inspiration from music and nature to remind festivalgoers of the gift of sound. The festival benefits The Center for Hearing and Speech, for which it has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. LINN Energy was this year's festival sponsor.

Chronicle subscribers will find this report with photographs on chron.com.