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The paintings in Kelly M. McVearry's exhibit look like the work of a professional. Each of them is different--one a rendering of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" in the style of Picasso; another an impressionistic treatment of the National Cathedral. The forms are precise and detailed; even the canvases are stretched expertly. She has received offers from strangers to buy them.

McVearry, a student in the human development program at the Graduate School of Education (GSE), takes pride in each of the artists. But the artworks weren't created by experienced painters. They are the work of the learning disabled children, ages 9 to 13, who McVearry teaches in Washington, D.C. They have been diagnosed with conditions like attention deficit disorder and Tourette's syndrome. One student with dysgraphia, who cannot even hold a pencil, produced five paintings.

The works are on display in the Holyoke Center as part of the "Paint Pals/Pen Pals" program, which unites the learning disabled students with fifth graders from Cambridgeport elementary school. The exchange began when McVearry brought her students' paintings from Washington to Cambridge; she will return with letters and poems from Cambridgeport.

The exchange was another success for McVearry's unique art education program, which helps learning disabled kids communicate in ways seemingly far beyond their years.

"It's phenomenally exciting," says Jessica H. Davis, a GSE lecturer on cognition and the arts, "to see someone who understands that the brain and spirit can be unlocked if you have the right key."

Reaching Off the Canvas

McVearry began her professional career in business, working for a real estate developer in Washington. But after she was offered the chance to work in the Lab School of Washington, a school for learning disabled kids, she decided to pursue her masters in education and has been teaching art ever since.

She uses the arts to teach academic skills. Over time, she manages to teach the children about history, mathematics and geography as well as painting and sculpture.

For example, during a unit on humanism, the students in her class are assigned to sculpt Michelangelo's David. But first, they are shown pictures of the Apuan Alps, the source of Michelangelo's finest marble.

"You would hurt yourself if you skied down this mountain," McVearry tells her students, because while the mountains look snow-covered, they are actually marble.

Then McVearry locates the Alps on a world map and explains the distance from Washington D.C. to Italy.

Next, she takes her students outside and stands them under a basketball hoop.

"Imagine a sculpture four feet taller than this hoop," McVearry says. That's the size of the David sculpture. The young sculptors are barely the height of the figure's knee.

The children study history, discussing the Renaissance and how work of the period differed from religious artwork.

And of course, they learn about art itself, like how frescoes are made or what different movements created.

While sculpting, they examine the David sculpture's pose. McVearry explains the style is called "contraposto" because it looks as if the figure is shifting his weight.

When the group visits museums, guides often stop and note how well-informed the children's critiques are, McVearry says--a major step for her students, who are often quiet and shy.

Outside class, McVearry worked individually with most of the students in the Holyoke Center exhibit.

She calls it a "mentor-apprentice relationship," because while she teaches her students the basics of painting, they have significant artistic freedom.

The children choose the subjects they want to paint, pick out their own materials in stores and mix their own colors. They even get to pick the size of their canvases. The result, says McVearry, is that they accomplish "something a lot harder than they thought they could."

She is now in the legal process of registering her after-school program, which she calls "Da Vinci Days," as a nonprofit business with additional teachers and students.

Communicating Through Art

Since enrolling at Harvard last summer, McVearry has missed her students. But the "Paint Pals/Pen Pals" program has allowed her to introduce her pupils' experiences into the lives of local kids.

Two weeks ago, McVearry and her friend Andrew L. Perito '01 brought the 11 paintings from the Holyoke exhibit to a fifth-grade classroom at Cambridgeport elementary school to talk about the artists.

If McVearry was surprised and touched that strangers would be interested in purchasing the canvases, she was overwhelmed with the response of the fifth graders.

"The young kids were stunned," she says. "They started asking all sorts of questions--did they really chose what to paint all by themselves? How did they know what colors to use or how to mix paints? The children were so impressed with the accomplishments that someone their age had rendered."

And then the Cambridge children expressed their feelings. For an hour and a half, the fifth graders wrote poems about the paintings and letters to the artists. The poems are also on display in Holyoke.

"It was an awesome experience," Perito says. "You look at the poetry and the art and it captures the uniqueness of this experience. I hope that people are able to see the same things I saw in the exhibit and appreciate the connection made between the two groups of kids."

McVearry is equally thrilled at the response from the local children, who overcame the "miles of separation and communicated through art."

"We brought the paintings to school in the hopes that they would be able to communicate through the poetry," says McVearry. "We will go back to the artists, now, [with the poems and letters], so that they can see that the work means something to someone else."