Kid Artists Spread Wings and Fly

The artwork and all else in the whole store is for the birds at a charming specialty shop where nearly 20 young art students are exhibiting their portraits of our feathered friends.

Work by 18 kids, two from Palos Verdes and others from throughout L.A. County and the South Bay, hangs at Wild Birds Unlimited in Torrance through the end of April.

Idalis Trejo, 9, of Rancho Palos Verdes, used soft pastels in her portrait of a penguin on an exceedingly small ice floe. He looks quite angry, though penguins are by nature mellow fellows.

Sonia Reza, 16, of Palos Verdes Estates, did her proud peacock in oils, of luscious blues and greens with the majestic bird's characteristic plumage covered with "eyes" giving a mystical touch.

"I teach in private homes, one on one, or in groups. My students range in age from three years to 65," said Bobbi Rich, the Santa Monica painter-instructor who believes the truism that an artist is never too young or too old.

Just follow the lilting songbird sounds to Wild Birds Unlimited, where you might be surprised to find not a single living bird inside. This perhaps accounts for the sour expression of Maggie, the calico cat in residence. The merry music of many feathered species is only recorded.

Owner Bob Shanman, in business there 16 years, stocks everything under the sun to attract, feed and house birds, plus books and videos to help identify myriad species, found from backyards of older urban tract homes to woodland hilltop mansions and beaches or harbors.

Bird fancier and noted artist herself, Rich assigned a springtime project to students to paint birds and Shanman was happy to offer gallery space to display them. She also has two small oil paintings of vivid hummingbirds bordered in gold leaf in the show.

Exhibitors range in age from five to 16, and so their techniques reflect talent, well, still in development, ranging up—with age and practice—to near-professional quality. Little kids worked on 4x4 inch canvases, with larger works by the older artists.

These younger children are essaying to paint with oils on stretched canvas, far more demanding than a box of crayons.

Some works are marked not for sale. A few are $10 and $25, with another listed at $101.50, while a handsomely framed oil painting of quite lifelike Canada geese flying over a family of bears on a wave-lashed island has a $526 price tag.

Other exhibitors are Brianna Bruggerman, Jada D'Oyen, Kaitlynn D'Oyen, Grace Figueroa, Sandra Le, Madeline MacMillan, Kalista Magana, Kennedy Magana, Kaitlln McWilliams, Vanessa Mona, Lily Ruggiero, Alejandro Trejo, Jaime Savitz, Katherine Shanahan, Kindra Soto, Jasmine Torres, Kares Yee and Jade Ashley Hollingsworth.