Budding Artist, 9, Takes Her Cues From Nature

Forty-five children wearing brightly colored clothing crouched silently in their schoolyard Wednesday morning, their heads tucked to their bodies, trying to look like rocks.

The scene was unusual enough to enthrall a handful of parents who stood by. But just as unusual is the freckle-faced girl who was directing the students and who had come up with the idea for this environmental art project. Sonja Shipley is not a typical 9-year-old.

She has the usual Girl Scout meetings and swim lessons. But she also meets actors and playwrights, visits museums regularly, has been using computers since preschool and attends Pluralistic School No. 1, a private school of 90 students and teachers who do sculpture and painting.

Sonja lives in Santa Monica with her mother, a playwright, and her father, a financial adviser. She is a child of the Westside, where affluence and individualism mix to produce sometimes unexpected results.

The idea for the environmental project developed several weeks ago when her mother, Sharyn, took Sonja and her 4-year-old sister Madison to the Santa Monica Museum of Art to see an exhibition by light-and-space artist Lita Albuquerque. Among the bright, geometrical works, one item particularly impressed the solemn-eyed, articulate Sonja.

It was a photograph of what Albuquerque calls ephemeral pieces: a temporary “earthwork” consisting of a bright-blue pigment applied to sand on a Malibu beach.

Sonja liked the artist’s work. “It made me happy because she thought of the world and the universe in a very special way,” she said. But the pigment on the sand bothered her.

“I think it’s better to not use chemicals and paint and stuff,” she said. She told her mother she had an idea to do a similar earthwork, but using children wearing brightly colored clothes instead of paint.

In a letter to her school principal asking permission to involve other students in her art project, Sonja wrote: “My vision is to have every kid in school that wants to bend down in the playground like rocks. But they must have solid-color clothes. So that they look like colored rocks.”

With her father’s help, Sonja said she would make four photographs of the scene: two in color to give to the school, and two in black and white to be hand-colored by herself. She said the photos would be environmental art pieces “because of the colors. Because of the beauty of it. And it doesn’t mess things up like chemicals (do).”

She told her principal that the project would start her career as an environmental artist.

Sonja also wrote a letter to Albuquerque at the museum telling about the project. As a result, the museum director invited Sonja to join another group of schoolchildren who were meeting with Albuquerque. There she had the opportunity to tell Albuquerque how she had been inspired and to invite the artist to come see her schoolmates crouching like colored rocks in the schoolyard.

“She was so happy she cried,” Sonja recalled matter-of-factly. But the artist, on honeymoon in Thailand, was unable to attend the day of the shoot and was unavailable for comment.

Forty-three children signed a sheet that Sonja passed around at school asking them to participate. She had promised that all who participated would get a “free gift,” but Sonja said she was still surprised so many signed up, especially the boys.

“I didn’t think the boys would sign up because a girl was doing it.”

On Wednesday, the day of the shoot, 45 children giggled and squirmed as Sonja commanded each child to stand in a specific place on the playground. At her signal, they all crouched. Parents, one with a video camera, stood by smiling.

“We get a free gift; we get a free gift. It’s worth it to be a rock for a while if we get a free gift,” one boy told his friend.

When Sonja was satisfied that her “rocks” had done their job, the children went back to class, each receiving a piece of candy from Sonja for participating.

School Principal Joel Pelcyger said he thought the half-hour of missed class time was worth it. “Everyone shines in something. Sonja is somebody who read late. A good way to promote her self-image is in other areas,” Pelcyger said.

Sonja’s mother said she was glad that Sonja’s teachers and administrators were not only supportive but encouraging of the girl’s creative efforts.

“I was acutely miserable in school. You couldn’t learn anything except exactly what they wanted you to learn. I want my children to be in environments where people listen to them,” she said.

To provide that environment, the Shipleys sent Sonja, and now send Madison, to a preschool with a “loving and attentive atmosphere,” where the children have dance lessons and the owner “tends to keep her clientele in the art circles,” Sonja’s mother said.

“It was a financial sacrifice at first, but it was worth it. You can’t give them too many tools,” she said.

Sonja said she hopes that this artwork will not be her last. “I’m gonna do another one. Maybe in a park, maybe with grown-ups.”