Art Education

Standing before a class one recent Tuesday afternoon, an instructor held up Jackson Pollock's 1943 Mural, a canvas splattered with paint of every conceivable hue. "How does this make you feel?" she asked. "Like this!" said one student who jumped up suddenly, waving his arms as though he planned to take flight. The first graders at St. Joan of Arc Elementary School were fixed on volunteer Ann Bloss, 43, mother of three boys at the school, and a print of the abstract expressionist's work.

The cochairs of the Charles A. Melton Arts and Education Center in West Chester last week laid off seven of the center's eight employees to save money. Steven Graves and Doris Bond wrote in a termination letter to the employees on Thursday that the center is "currently in a financial crunch" and that it must trim expenses. The center is projected to run $150,000 short of its $500,000 budget this year because it failed to negotiate a lease with the Sankofa Academy Charter School to rent the center for classes, said K. Blayne Easter, a board member opposed to the firings.

Looking Ahead: Art for All Ages, a 10-day event that begins Friday, specializes in art education geared to strengthen parent-child relationships. "We really want children and parents to experience these workshops together," said Paul McElwee, director of programs and education at the Garden State Discovery Museum. The program is a collaboration between the museum and the Camden County Cultural and Heritage Commission. Its focus is all aspects of the arts, from visual to performing.

Albert Einstein wrote, "Imagination is more important than knowledge. " In this, the World Year of Physics, celebrating Einstein's impact on science, the Philadelphia School District is taking the physicist's advice. This year, the district began a five-year collaboration with the city's Mural Arts Program to paint 100 public school walls, 20 each year. In a district already burdened with basic educational needs, the commitment to art education is a surprising shift. Still, supporters say, the benefits of art outweigh the program's cost, which will be at least $300,000 a year.

AS ANOTHER school year draws nears, there may be good news for parents eager to provide their children greater access to art education. Although the Philadelphia region is home to the Barnes Foundation, one of the world's most important art-education institutions, over the years only a select few have been lucky enough to learn, enjoy and be inspired. I hope that is about to change. The Barnes is proposing to relocate its art collection to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway for one overriding reason: to enrich the lives of tens of thousands of students from Philadelphia, the suburbs and beyond.

"Rounding up means to hunt and bring together thousands of cattle scattered over a large part of the country known as the free range. . .One morning I started out with the others on the trail of some four or five hundred cattle. . . " from N.C. Wyeth, "A Day With the Round-Up," Scribner's Magazine (March 1906). In 1904, painter N.C. Wyeth was 22 years old, living in Wilmington, contemplating marriage and trying to decide what steps to take to make himself a working artist.

As the drive to move the Barnes Foundation from Lower Merion to Philadelphia gathers momentum, one worthy group could get passed by the parade. That would be Barnes students - those who over the decades have used this great art collection as the basis for an art education, just as Albert C. Barnes intended. Yes - and this bears repeating - the Barnes Foundation is an art collection and a school. (Don't call it a museum.) Students have studied there, at low-cost tuition, since Barnes was alive.

The 11-story office building being readied for students of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts doesn't look much like a new gem on the city's cultural landscape. Just wait 'til the paint dries. Its ground floor may be shrouded in scaffolding. But high inside the old Navy recruiting post at Broad and Cherry Streets, students' creative juices are flowing. And along the North Broad Street side, a stunning two-story exhibition space is taking shape behind the scenes.

The Penn State Cooperative Extension in Montgomery County will present environmental-education workshops on wetlands and water conservation next week. The workshops are geared to classroom and home-school teachers, nature center staff, and leaders of youth groups, such as scout troops and 4-H clubs. "The workshops will give them classroom-ready activities to use. They will leave this class ready to roll with activities they feel comfortable with," said Kathleen Geist, workshop instructor and recycling education agent for the extension office.

For artist Travis Hines, to walk through the gallery where his and others' work is on display is to experience transformation. "It's not pictures anymore. It's real stuff," Travis, 8, a second grader at Erial Elementary School, said of the halls full of student work on display for the school's Art Night. The 18th annual show of pupil creativity, which features more than 3,000 works and concludes Thursday, is the brainchild of art teacher Madeline Ullom. Walking through halls full of seascapes and cubist works, quilts and fields of stars, Ullom said she began Art Night to show students' families that their children's art education extended beyond the basics.