The dynamic creations of young artists are on display this weekend at the Berkeley Art Center's 13th annual Youth Arts Festival and the Destiny Arts Center's production, "Tomorrow is Today."

Visitors to the 2005 Youth Arts Festival are pulled in by a colorful display of weaving hanging from a birch tree limb. Amazingly, the weavers are only in kindergarten at Malcolm X Elementary School, where they worked on their weavings for four months.

The artwork in the exhibit, produced by Berkeley public school students, ranges from the predictably childlike to the unexpectedly sophisticated, which makes you take a second look at the grade level of the artist.

In a mixed-media piece combining images, words and a photograph, fourth-grader Gisela Teied writes, "Dream me. Dream me away to the dead where my grandpa awakes." She and other Cragmont Elementary students in Joe McClain's classes created a series of mixed-media pieces with a dreamlike, layered quality. Another series created by his students features painted and decorated cloth hanging from wood hangers painted white.

Paper masks decorated with paint, feathers and beads are both expressive and abstract. Again, you can't believe they could be the work of kindergartners.

In a torn-paper portrait by Nancy Sloan, a seventh-grader at Willard Middle School, a dancer seems to stop in mid-motion to hit hispose, touching the brim of his hat in style.

The festival presents the students' work in a professional format, mounted on the gallery walls.

"Thirteen years ago we decided we wanted to do something for children to develop audiences and artists," said Robbin Henderson, executive director of the center. "When I called to speak with the person in charge of the arts for the district, there was no one. It was surprising in Berkeley, where so many professional artists live." Since then, she said, arts education in the schools has improved.

Cubist portraits, papier-mache puppets, murals of sea creatures and a green monster with sleepy eyes standing in front of a house: the artistic imagination of the young.

The arts exhibit is on display at the Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Berkeley (in Live Oak Park) through April 2. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. (Closed March 27.)

It all came together for Desiree Woods at Monday's technical rehearsal of "Tomorrow is Today."

"It's amazing to see something come together like that. You're freaking out the whole weekend that it won't jell, then suddenly a light bulb comes on and you see it," she explained. Woods has been in three previous shows of the Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company; this year she is a student director.

"It's crazy. You run from a dance run, to the back row to check the projection of actors and then back to the front for your scene. It's a lot of work, but its totally worth it," she said. In the weeks leading up to the show, students rehearse seven days a week.

The annual shows, enthusiastically anticipated by Destiny's growing audience, incorporate hip-hop, modern, African and aerial dance, theater, martial arts, rap, spoken word and song. It's a one-of-a-kind performance, written and choreographed by the students about their lives and experiences. Woods said they develop a story line to pull the students' stories together.

"The audience always gets a message from the show. But as a performer you learn something about yourself," she explained. "In last year's show we explored meditation and insight into ourselves. This is going to sound weird, but I realized people are a little like artichokes; I told you it was going to sound weird. We have all these leaves that are the defenses and the projections of who we think we should be that cover our hearts. The journey of life is to peel off the leaves and get back to your heart."

"Tomorrow is Today" will be performed at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St. at 14th Street, Oakland, at 7:30 p.m., tonight and Saturday, at 3 p.m. Sunday and at 7:30 p.m. next Friday and March 26, $12 to $20 sliding scale for adults, 18 and under, $6.

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