Student artist in the spotlight: Brayden Massey-Jones
Age: 6.
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Grade: First.
School: Mendenhall River Community School.
Arts of choice: Piano. "I like to paint with watercolors or regular paint. I like to build sculptures out of clay, and I like to do origami."
Experience: Three years. "And I just started playing the violin."
Reason: "It has a lot of notes, and I like to perform. I want to keep going to have my goal to be the best."
Favorites: "It's tied." His favorite songs to play are "Little Indian Brave," by James Bastien, and "Ode to Joy," by Beethoven.
Recent works: The painting, shown above, was as part of a backdrop for his school's winter concert.
Greatest accomplishment: "Performing in the MRCS gym, because it's fun to be acting like a grown-up."
Future plans: "Do jazz piano like my music teacher Mr. Maas. ... I want to be a repair man. I want to fix things like float planes, boats and cars."
Activites: "I play tee ball and I have wrestled."
You should know: "I can cook grilled cheese. I like geography and knowing what the capitals of other states and countries are, and I know about continents. I like reading books about weather, planets and stars, countries and continents, sunken ships and other things in the ocean."
His music teacher, Michael Maas, says: "Brayden has a ton of innate musical skill. He notices nuances in music well beyond what you'd expect for a first-grader. Once we watched a live performance of a song we'd sung in class, and he immediately picked up on the slightly faster tempo and other subtle differences; pretty special stuff for a 6-year-old. In addition to piano, he has taken up the violin."
• Student Artist in the Spotlight is a weekly feature on the Neighbors page and is in collaboration with the Juneau School District Elementary Art Program. To have your student art included, contact your school office.