Purple CowsMuralist Glenna Avila believes in purple...

Purple Cows

Muralist Glenna Avila believes in purple cows and pink skies. She loves trees with dazzling blue trunks and a halo of magenta and orange leaves.

Avila believes art is the product of a liberated mind and spirit and preaches replacing preconceptions of reality with limitless possibilities.

Her exuberance is on display in what is probably her most famous mural, done for the 1984 Olympics. It glorifies a wall of the Hollywood Freeway near the Los Angeles Children’s Museum. On it, Avila has pictured a group of children running, skipping and jumping, their activity a reflection of their innocent grace. The painted children are blissfully unaware of the mobile parade that passes them in a belch of fumes every day.

Avila not only paints children, she teaches children to paint. Her latest project, produced with fellow artist Margaret Garcia, features the creativity of the children of Harry Gipson’s fourth-grade class at Colfax Elementary School in North Hollywood.

Near the lunch tables in the playground, the children have painted a 10-by-24-foot mural, the result of the youngster’s reflection of a show they saw at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in October.

After viewing “The Fauve Landscape” exhibition--which featured the works of Matisse, Braque and Dufy painting the world as they saw it--the children came back to their school and worked with Avila and Garcia to artistically interpret their world in this expansive medium.

At the beginning of the 10-week project, each of the youngsters drew on paper a section of what would become the whole project. Then, as a group project, they decided how to fit all the pieces together. Some, like Erin Carter-Collier and Justin Warren, who were charged with drawing Colfax School, worked together. “This is a hard thing for youngsters to do,” said Avila. “It’s like giving up ownership of your space,” she said. “But the whole mural was an exercise in teamwork as well as self-expression.”

Another exercise with a high degree of difficulty was upscaling the small drawings to the larger canvas, in this case a wall. “It is difficult for even many adults,” Avila said. “But some of the children, like Mauricio Cano, who also drew a series of wonderful horses, took to it naturally. He was especially quick.”

The mural project was put together by Lisa Vihos, the educational director at LACMA who has coordinated other mural projects for city schools, Avila said. It was Vihos who got the Ford Motor Co. to fund the exercise.

“I just wish we could do more murals,” Avila added. “There are so many schools that want to have a program of their own.”

Trust Me

The Wilderness Institute, 28118 Agoura Road in Agoura, was founded eight years ago by Brad Childs, a dissatisfied public servant.

“I’d worked within various government programs as a naturalist and recreation specialist, but the money for the programs was always disappearing, as were many of the programs,” Childs said.

Childs decided to set up his own program with some good ideas but not much money. The money, as it happens, followed.

Within a couple of years, the Wilderness Institute became a popular place for families to go for guided nature hikes or overnight programs. Nature programs were developed for handicapped people, for inner-city youngsters and for “youth at risk,” kids who are getting themselves into trouble because they haven’t anything else to do.

But the institute also started to be used by businesses and organizations as a school for leadership skills and teamwork. Sort of an Outward Bound for the MBA set.

Childs said that many businesses, nonprofit agencies and even college groups like sororities and fraternities send people to the sessions--which can last from one day to several--to learn about self-reliance, trust and teamwork. The overnighters usually stay at the Malibu Conference Center, which also offers housing units for groups who want to continue their togetherness 24 hours a day.

The groups do some classroom work, then head outdoors to the wilds of the Santa Monica Mountains where they are engaged in exercises that involve facing down emotional and physical fears as well as learning to rely on the other members of their group.

“A lot of the people, when they first see the outdoor course, say they are going to pass on certain ones, usually the ones dealing with climbing or heights,” Childs said. “But by the time they are ready to participate in those exercises, they are psyched up and confident.”

He said Pacific Telephone sends a lot of its people to the courses, as does the IRS. In answer to the raised eyebrows about the participation of the IRS, he responded, “They have a hard job to do and they need to reaffirm their sense of excellence and cooperation with each other and their clients.” Childs said participants from the IRS came as a group and they were great.

He also has a great group of his own at the center, he said.

He married an institute volunteer who is a former park ranger, and now he and Bonnie have another budding wilderness woman in 12-week-old Caitlin Elizabeth. Childs’ brother, Andy--whom Brad calls “the original mountain man”--also works at the center.

Prices for activities run from $30 per family for a day’s nature hike, to $300 to $450 per person for a leadership seminar.

Business Sense

Israeli native Jacob Schlessinger has lived in this country for only eight months, but his new company, S. G. International, which he started with a friend, already is a success, he said.

Schlessinger is an ecology professional who offers a free trash pickup for recyclable materials.

With a little something extra.

Gifts.

When you sign up with his company, you get a free container into which you put all your recyclables, and it is emptied once a week.

“You don’t have to separate anything you put into the container,” Schlessinger said, “and you just stack your papers next to the container for pickup.”

In addition to the free service, Schlessinger offers free gifts, like television sets, VCRs, stereos and trips, to customers who accumulate points on a system Schlessinger outlines in a brochure on his company, which is headquartered in Woodland Hills. He said he makes his money, and the money to pay for the gifts, from the recycled items.

Schlessinger said he already has 2,500 residential customers in the local valleys, and works with 250 businesses.

Biker Chic

Oliver Shokouh, owner of Harley-Davidson of Glendale--one of the country’s largest dealerships, he said--is almost as proud of his building as his bikes.

Shokouh recently upgraded his 12,000-square-foot classic 1921 Art Deco building working from original photographs and building plans, restoring all the building’s Art Deco motifs, columns and other architectural features.

Once he was done, he threw a party for dozens of his closest friends and the press, but it’s now back to business as usual.

Shokouh said people don’t have to buy a bike to come see his building.

Overheard

“My dreams for my sons did not include an early death in some desert in the Middle East.”

--Women talking in Encino