Youngsters Find Rebus Intriguing Clue to Art : Education: A group called Manhattan Friends of the Arts is visiting grade schools and stimulating youthful imaginations.

For one afternoon, elementary students at Pennekamp School in Manhattan Beach played “hooky” last week. Instead of working in a classroom on math and grammar lessons, they convened in the school’s cafeteria, where a local artist introduced them to rebus--a representation of words or syllables by pictures or symbols.

Then, the fifth- and sixth-graders were turned loose to design their own masterpieces.

A snip of paper here, a whisk with a marker there, and the students soon had produced their own rebuses, with messages ranging from “I Love Girls” to “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

“I never really thought of art as doing this,” said 12-year-old Kevin Fish as he drew on paper a picture of an eye, a heart, and stick dolls with skirts. “You get to use your imagination to make up things and to let your mind go wild.”

Kevin and his classmates were taking part in Art Talks, a new program launched last week by the Manhattan Friends of the Arts to bring artists into the schools to work with teachers and students.

The program’s first guest artist was Michael Davis, the San Pedro sculptor who crafted the MN-HAT-TAN rebus on Manhattan Beach Boulevard in Manhattan Beach.

For more than an hour, about 50 students buzzed around the Pennekamp School cafeteria with the tools of their trade--art paper, pencils, markers, scissors and glue--and under the tutelage of Davis, conveyed their thoughts via rebuses.

If a student can recognize that a series of symbols can express a thought, Davis said, he has accomplished his mission in trying to get youths to appreciate some of their cultural life.

“Words and symbols can have multiple meanings,” Davis said, “and I want to get that across to the students.”

In viewing some of the completed work, most of which had lots of pictures of eyes and hearts, Davis said, “They’re pretty direct and honest. Sometimes, within art, (students) are given a chance to say something, or let it out.”

Whereas most of the drawings by Pennekamp’s boys related to their affinity for the opposite sex, the girls’ rebuses showed that their minds are on loftier topics.

“It’s fun using symbols for words and then putting them together,” said 11-year-old Kim Shafer as she drew a dollar bill--”dough,” she explained--while her five teammates sketched an O with a slash through it (“not”), a sad face (“worry”), a bee, and a happy face.

Several tables away, four students began to draw something they said would make nice Christmas gifts: a group of stick figures, a heart, a diamond, and rings.

“Diamond rings are something nice to get and give for Christmas,” said Travis Davis, 11.

Travis, who sports a crew cut with designs sculpted in the back, summed up his thoughts about rebuses: “This beats doing class work, and it’s fun. . . . This is pretty in --pretty cool. “