It was a gathering of Northeastern’s youngest artists—ages 2 to 5—exhibiting their work in the university’s Gallery 360 as their parents’ hearts swelled with pride.

This year’s theme for the annual exhibit is opposites, and the showstopper is a 60-foot diorama of the forest by day and by night populated with creatures of the young artist’s imagination: There are owls and bats and napping foxes. There is a prickly porcupine and a skunk with a stripe made of sequins. And, of course, Bruce the Moose—life-size with his head and antlers coming out of the wall.

The children, who are all from the Russell J. Call Children’s Center on campus, have been working on the exhibit for more than four months, according to Regina Nazzaro, the director of center. She said the children drew their inspiration from field trips to Harvard’s Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Fine Arts, and a real urban forest in Boston’s Fens.

Photos by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

Photos by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University