Talents of young artists will be on display Saturday, March 11, at the Albany Museum of Art, where youth and adults alike also will have the rare opportunity to collaborate with a professional artist.

“Saturday will be an art-filled double-header,” AMA Director of Education and Public Programming Annie Vanoteghem said. “We will have a special two-hour art studio collaboration with Orion Wertz, one of the artists whose work is showing in the Picture This exhibition in the Haley Gallery. Immediately after that, the awards for the Kiwanis Club of Albany-Dougherty County’s 42nd annual Student Art Show will be presented in the Willson Auditorium.”

The Community Collaborative Art Studio with Wertz starts at noon and continues until 2 pm in the AMA Classroom.

“We will have large sheets of paper and drawing materials, such as pencils and charcoal, in the classroom studio, but you can bring your own pencils, pens, and markers if you prefer,” Vanoteghem said. “A participant will draw on part of the paper, then another participant will fill in another area. Orion Wertz will move from table to table and contribute to the drawings.”

She said the results for each piece will be “a unique chaotic array of improvised images.”

There is no cost for youth or college students to participate. Adults who are not students can join in the fun for $10.

The studio session will be followed from 2-4 pm by the Kiwanis Club’s annual awards ceremony for middle and high school students. The top local prize is $250, and local winners will go on to compete in the club’s state competition on April 22.

Barbie Fisher, with the local Kiwanis Club, said the artwork submissions were recently judged and that the winning pieces will be on display Saturday at the AMA at the awards ceremony. The winning artworks will be on display in the AMA’s Willson Auditorium through March 13, after which they will be taken to Gainesville for the statewide competition. Winners in the state competition receive “significant scholarship money” from Kiwanis, she noted.

Saturday’s award ceremony, which includes light refreshments, is free and open to the public.

High school art submissions that were not local finalists for the state competition are currently on display at Albany State University, and middle school artworks that did not place for awards can be seen at the Albany Area Arts Council, she said. After March 13, elementary student submissions will be on display in the Willson Auditorium through the end of the month.

“It’s all in honor of Youth Art Month,” Fisher said, “and I wanted to incorporate all of the art organizations. You’ve got to get them through the door so they will know there is an opportunity out there.”

She said the Kiwanis Club is promoting Saturday, March 18 as Open Gallery Day at the AMA, ASU, and the Arts Council. Fisher said she hopes people will come out to the three locations to see the creativity of students in the Albany area. Kiwanis members will be on hand at the sites that day.

“We hope to make Open Gallery Day a big thing,” she said.