Youngsters in San Diego Get the Picture : Artists Bring Talents to Classrooms

It has been five months since philanthropist Muriel Gluck announced a $3-million donation aimed at taking art to San Diego schoolchildren, and the “Young at ‘Art” program that money funded is already getting high marks from school principals, teachers, students and parents.

The initial success of this ground-breaking program has encouraged San Diego Unified School District officials to seek special funding to study “Young at ‘Art,” which Gluck conceived before a 1988 federal report called for stepped-up arts education in the nation’s schools.

The difference between “Young at ‘Art” and other arts residency programs that send professional artists into the classrooms is that the artists are viewed as models for both the teachers and the students rather than purely art teachers. “Young at ‘Art” envisions sending artists into all the city’s elementary classrooms--not just a few. The results so far are encouraging.

Seven-year-old first-grader Steven Jones “idolizes” artists Eddie Edwards and Maria Pagano, who are assigned to work at Rowan Elementary in East San Diego, Jones’ mother said.

“He talks about ‘Mr. Eddie,’ ” Alice Jones said. “He knows when the artists are coming. He gets very excited.”

Since the program started in December, Jones has turned their living room into a virtual gallery for Steven’s varied art projects, like his sculpture of a dinosaur and a figure collage crafted from cardboard and pipe cleaners.

Jerry Hooper, principal of Barnard Elementary in the Loma Portal area, calls the new program “a godsend, a wonderful way to bring the arts back into the curriculum.”

“When I meet with my PTA group and the Tuesday morning parent hour, parents are saying, ‘Thank God. We’ve been waiting for this kind of thing,’ ” Hooper said. “It brings balance back to our curriculum.

“The emphasis has been so strong on the basic skills the last few decades,” Hooper said. “Art and the performing arts were dropped out of the curriculum. What we’ve seen, particularly with the single-parent family, is a need to provide art and performing arts for our students.”

Designed to reach all 60,000 students in the San Diego Unified School District’s 114 elementary schools, and eventually pupils in selected middle schools, “Young at ‘Art” is the brainchild of Gluck, a Los Angeles resident who also maintains a home here. Gluck supports select San Diego charities such as the San Diego Museum of Art, Scripps Clinic and the San Diego Opera.

She plans to funnel about $3.75 million over three to five years into the program through the Maxwell H. Gluck Foundation in memory of her late husband, a clothing store magnate.

Gluck conceived “Young at ‘Art” as a two-pronged program to put art and artists into the schools and expose children to art museums.

She has budgeted about $2.75 million for the school district’s use and the rest for the San Diego Museum of Art. The museum is preparing a series of enrichment programs to develop students’ appreciation for art.

The bulk of the district’s funds spent so far have gone to pay artists’ salaries. Of $296,000 school-district officials say they have spent on the first five months of the program, $240,000 has gone to pay about 50 artists, said Kay Wagner, the district’s fine arts coordinator. Of the rest, $6,000 went for supplies and $50,000 for four utility vans to haul the supplies to the schools, Wagner said.

Although the artists are contracted for only 20 hours a week, their pay is a respectable $20 an hour.

“We had an incredible number of applications from people who were extremely qualified,” Wagner said. After the announcement of the project, she moved quickly, assembling the first group of artists in November and putting them into 16 schools in December.

Now, 50 artists are serving about 16,000 students in 46 schools, Wagner said. Another 16 to 20 schools will be added about every three months.

Despite the artists’ presence, Wagner emphasized that the teachers still carry the primary burden for teaching art. The artists were hired not as a substitutes for teachers, but as role models for both students and teachers. Barnard’s Hooper recognizes this.

“Our teachers thought it important that they work with the artists,” Hooper said. “So they are (learning) the techniques that the artists are using. Once the Gluck money is gone, the art instruction evaporates. If we’re training the teachers now, it becomes a self-perpetuating program.”

The artists do not work from a rigid curriculum. Wagner directed them to cooperate with the faculty, parents and students, and tailor each program to the needs of the individual school and to the particular skills of the artist. Because of this flexibility, students are learning that art is much more than just painting, drawing and sculpture.

At Rowan Elementary in East San Diego, video artist Maria Pagano teaches techniques for drawing and sculpting, but, under her expert guidance, a group is creating its own rap video with a say-no-to-drugs theme. These fourth- and fifth-graders are learning how to write a script and make a story board, choreograph a dance routine and take turns being directors, art directors, camera operators and performers.

This kind of freedom is so new to some of the students that they still ask Pagano, “Will we see ourselves on television?” She has to remind them that they are making the show, that they have control over it.

“It has to do with building self-confidence,” Pagano said. “Our motto is there’s no such word as ‘Can’t.’ When a kid asks, ‘Can I make a rap video?,’ I say, ‘Do you want to do a rap video?’ Now they know they can make movies. It helps them build self-confidence and self-esteem.”

A small, ethnically diverse school, Rowan sits on a mesa above Home Avenue. The playground has a spectacular view of the mountains, Mexico and the ocean. Observing that most of the students ignore this scenic vista, Pagano will take a class out to the very edge of the playground, sit them down and ask them to draw what they see.

Students at Angier Elementary, however, are being exposed to something entirely different. Environmental artist Paul Hobson and Jonathon Glasier, an experimental musical theorist, have helped the student body design sculptures that make music for the playground.

It is a playground that even Principal Ted Janette describes as “flat and kind of blah.” Because the school serves the Cabrillo Heights Navy housing community, there is a high turnover among students. The art project offers an opportunity for this somewhat nomadic group of students to leave a part of themselves with the school. Although Janette likes the ideas they have developed, he fears the project may be too costly to actually build.

“What they’re proposing looks expensive, “ Janette said. “I’m trying to get more blacktop, and that’s expensive.”

The artists, however, are banking on their ability to get assistance from a Navy Construction Battalion and perhaps from the city’s Park and Recreation Department.

“This is located in the middle of the Navy housing area,” Dobson said. “This could work in our favor.”

He has asked the Navy for help in building the playground.

“It’s a can of worms,” Hobson acknowledges, “but we have high hopes. We’re very serious.”

Hobson said he is impressed with the way the students have responded to the project, including their eagerness and ability to learn how to read topographical maps.

“Kids are sponges,” Hobson said. “Their brains are sponges. They see and they do. They understand what you’re doing, like someone doing a mural on a wall.”

This variety of art experience is the hallmark of “Young at ‘Art.” Students at La Jolla’s Torrey Pines Elementary have learned to apply modern technology--photocopying machines--in a traditional collage technique. Sculpture Jeff Chapline is teaching a group of Torrey Pines students how to make a tool cart as a practical lead-in to classes on sculpting.

At Barnard Elementary, the social-studies classes provide the content for huge, stand-up books the students are making under the guidance of artists Nannette Macias and Anna O’Cain.

“Young at ‘Art” not only benefits children. It provides a financial and even a creative boost for the artists, allowing some of them more time to pursue their art.

“With me, it was very timely,” said artist Eddie Edwards, who is creating a mural with the Rowan children. “It meant survival. It actually gives a chance to get on my feet . . . to do other things. I’m expanding in other areas because I’ve got the time.”

To Maria Pagano, Edward’s partner at Rowan, being selected for “Young at ‘Art” has offered an end to regular stints as a waitress. “Even though waitressing is steady, it is tiring and grueling work,” Pagano said. “With kids I get a lot of energy and invigoration, even inspiration from their energy.

“They’re a positive influence on us as artists. Because they are free, it loosens you up.”

While the artists expose students to the range and possibilities of art, the Museum of Art is instructing the teachers in more traditional art concepts. Basic elments such as line, color, shape and texture and the world’s masterpieces are discussed in filmstrips and cassettes that the museum has purchased especially for the program. These will also be shown to the students.

“I’m looking at the museum’s role as an interpreter and educator and to get back to the basics,” said Barney Malesky, the head of the museum’s education outreach program. “We’re not about art. We’re about art appreciation.”

The museum is preparing for more field trips from participating schools in March. Specially trained museum docents will use examples from the museum’s collection to point out the elements discussed in the filmstrips. The museum will host about 60 students a day, Malesky said, or about 7,000 to 8,000 pupils a school year.

In April, the museum begins holding a series of Saturday art classes for selected students and parents as well as monthly family days. Hands-on activities, now being developed by the museum, will be a key to these visits, Malesky said.

The museum is also purchasing a customized 45-foot Art Rig trailer that will become a major part of the museum’s “Young at ‘Art” program in May. Outfitted with replications of the museum’s art objects and work space for kids, the Art Rig will visit each school in the program for two to three days in advance of field trips.

Although the museum is expected to receive more than $1 million of the Gluck money for “Young at ‘Art,” both Malesky and museum deputy director Jane Rice refused to divulge how much of the money it has spent or plans to spend this year.

“Young at ‘Art” has had its problems.

“If I could have changed things, I would have ordered all the supplies prior to the artists going to work,” Wagner said. “We put artists to work first, and then we ordered clay and other supplies. As it was, we’ve managed. The schools have generously contributed and we’ve had some private donations.”

Arts residencies have been around for years, but this may be the first time a large scale, district-wide coordinated residency program has been tried in the U.S.

Wagner hopes it will attract study.

Last year, the National Endowment for the Arts published a report critical of the low level of arts education nationally. Issued in May, the NEA report called for a minimum of 15% of weekly education in the arts.

It’s ironic that Gluck reached the same conclusion several months before the report was published, although it took a little more time for her to devise an action plan.

The result is that students are discovering imagination and creativity, said Rowan first-grade teacher Nancy Paznokas.

“The kids love it,” Paznokas said. “They’re learning that you don’t have to be the best artist in the world, that whatever they do is fine.”

Rowan’s principal, Mable Wigfall, said “Young at ‘Art’ has been a big plus for certain students.

“Some (students) who haven’t done well academically are doing well with art work, and it’s kind of turning them on,” she said.

Young Steven Jones, who excels in all subjects, has been turned on also.

“He’s always been an artsy-craftsy kid,” Alice Jones, Steven’s mother, said. “The last few weeks he’s been going to the bookmobile or the school library and checking out all of these craft books. He brought one home on sculpture and one on painting. He’s been checking them all out lately. It’s right up his alley.”