Green Meadows Center Greets Santa’s Helpers

The Green Meadows Recreation Center in South Central Los Angeles looked like Santa’s workshop under siege Saturday, as 150 little Santa’s helpers went to work decorating fuzzy red-and-white Christmas stockings.

Deeply intent, the children let their artistic juices--mainly glue and paint of every color--go with the creative flow as they heaped on sequins, bows, streamers, feathers, cotton, pompons, pipe cleaners and buttons.

Glitter flew. Egos soared. And somehow order emerged from the colorful chaos.

The material for the three-hour art workshop was donated by local merchants. McDonald’s donated 150 hamburgers to feed the hungry artists, and local TV news reporter Lonnie Lardner provided the instruction, as well as the impetus for the event.

Before becoming a broadcaster, Lardner studied art at Ecole des Beaux-Arts in France and Parson’s School of Design in New York. Earlier this year, she decided it was time to share her artistic talent.

Lardner contacted a man who worked with Los Angeles’ Community Youth Gang Services, who told her the inner-city parks were in trouble--but that each time a park sponsored productive activities, drug dealing and gang activity was pushed back a bit. Lardner got in touch with Marlene Armstrong, senior director of the Green Meadows center, a well-maintained recreation facility in a part of town park rangers call “tough.”

When Lardner and Armstrong attempted their initial project for Halloween--inviting local children to carve donated pumpkins and eat free hamburgers--Lardner had a vision of the kids cynically smashing their jack-o’-lanterns on the street as they walked home.

But “at the end of the day, they all walked off with these glowing faces, carrying their little pumpkins and little trick-or-treat bags with real pride,” Lardner said. “My heart felt good.”

Money and donations for the Christmas workshop came in “dribs and drabs,” Lardner said. But volunteers came in from all over. A friend of Lardner, a hairstylist for “Mr. Belvedere” television show, darted between the tables, gradually accumulating as much glue and sequins as some of the stockings. Another couple said they’d met while both were living on Skid Row. Now they’ve managed to pull themselves up a notch or so on the socioeconomic ladder and are ready to help children who may be tottering, they said.

“The Lord brought my mommy out of Skid Row,” pronounced 6-year-old Jeramiah, holding up a Christmas ornament he’d decorated in a black and gold motif vaguely reminiscent of a Czarist icon.

Some children worked with a Jackson Pollack-like abandon, soaking their stockings and the hats they were decorating with glue and then heaping on every decoration within reach.

Others took a minimalist approach, agonizing over exactly where they would place each sequin and pompon. Between projects, youngsters armed with dripping paintbrushes and oozing glue bottles ricocheted between tables. Some chased the elusive artistic muse over to the nearby swings, down the slide and back again.

“I’ll never really know who was touched here, who may be a Picasso, Van Gogh or Dali down the road,” Lardner said afterward, gold glitter sparkling in her magenta lipstick. “But I think any creativity and productivity they experience now will show up as creativity and productivity later in life.”

Meanwhile, the kids were already headed home, skipping along in glittery hats and clutching glittery Christmas stockings down streets decorated with graffiti and razor wire.