Ten Newtown High School students were busy installing the annual NHS Art Portfolio Exhibition last week, presenting nearly 60 original works of art in the southeastern corridor of Newtown Community Center.

The works are on view until January 2, at which time a closing reception will be held. The reception is scheduled for 4 to 6 pm that afternoon, and the public is invited to meet the student artists at that time.

Until then, their works can be viewed any time the community center is open: Monday through Friday, 6 am to 9 pm; Saturday, 7 am to 7:30 pm; and Sunday, 7 am to 7 pm.

This year’s exhibition includes works by Jamie Davis, Isabel Harrington, Althea Hurley, Kaitlyn Kantor, Emilia Koziol, Moira McKinley, Kayleigh Roche, Abby Tainter-Gilbert, Alysha Wedler, and Jack Wojtowicz.

The collection offers works in most mediums: pencil, charcoal, ink, acrylic, mixed media, oil on canvas, watercolors, pen and ink on paper, Nupastel, and graphite.

With each artist’s works is a notebook. Each started life identically — measuring approximately 6 by 9 inches, with a pale brown paper cover — but each has had its cover decorated by an artist and now serves as a guest book, with the hope that the public will leave comments during the run of the show.

After years of being presented at C.H. Booth Library, the exhibition moved this year into the recently opened town building on the Fairfield Hills campus.

Carol Skolas, who teaches the Art Portfolio class at NHS, said she and the young artists “love the new space.”

“This will give us a lot of exposure,” she said December 19, during the installation of the exhibition. A series of panels have again been loaned to the high school group by The Society of Creative Arts of Newtown (SCAN), upon which the works were being hung last Thursday afternoon.

“We are thankful for SCAN, for the loan of these panels,” Ms Skolas mentioned. The community center, she said, does not yet have a way to display art.

While Ms Skolas was at the community center for the installation last week, it was the students who were responsible for hanging setting up their displays. Representing works created since the start of the current academic year, most of the students have five or six pieces on view. Moira McKinley, however, has ten works on view, thanks to a collection of portraits that are grouped among five frames.

The AP Portfolio Class will not be the final time these students present their work for public view. “These are top students,” Ms Skolas said. “These are artists who are either going on to college for art or who wanted to take an upper level class this year.”