Chalk It Up to Art Appreciation : Education: Middle school students in Orange turn the faculty parking lot into a sea of color. The key, a teacher says, is simple: ‘Anything works.’

Heather Reyes knelt in the parking lot, her fingers gripping colored chalk that transformed a piece of pavement into a scene from outer space.

Before the watchful eye of her homeroom teacher, Heather and her classmates created teal-colored domes, a gray rocket and fuchsia mountains rising from a royal blue planet.

“Looking good, looking good,” said Santiago Middle School teacher Van Fryman as he stepped back to survey the scene that the Orange seventh-graders had created.

Beneath a backdrop of real green mountains dotted with yellow mustard flowers, the school’s 33 homeroom classes turned the faculty parking lot into a sea of color Friday afternoon, as each group colored a 6-by-8-foot space.

The classes selected their own designs, which ranged from Bart Simpson to the Mona Lisa to life beneath the sea.

“I kind of pushed for an underwater or space scene, because I thought it lent itself to this medium, but now that I look around, I see that anything works,” said Fryman, as he directed Isam Samara, 12, to sharpen the outline of a rocket.

Friday’s activities took place under the direction of master street painter Kurt Wenner, who visited the school for two days this week and showed the students how to create pavement pictures with chalk.

Wenner, who visits about eight schools a year through the education division of the Los Angeles Music Center, said chalk painting can teach children that they can use simple techniques to create complex works.

“A lot of traditional forms of art are based on a great deal of craftsmanship and use more expensive materials,” said Wenner, who earned a living as a street painter while he studied art.

“The craftsmanship here,” he said, “depends on the use of color, lightness of touch, willingness to spend time on an image. Offhand, I can’t think of another medium you can do with 800 students in four hours, so it’s a unique medium in that respect.”

Wenner, 32, who grew up in Santa Barbara and moved to Italy nine years ago, has placed first several times in the International Street Painting Festival Competition and has earned the name Master Madonnaro. The name comes from madonnari, the name for Italian street painters who specialized in producing images of the Virgin Mary in chalk.

He also creates oil paintings, drawings and murals but focuses on the chalk medium for his school programs.

Santiago students spent the better part of the school day on their projects. First, they used chalk to fill each square with background colors, layering hues to give the drawings depth. The creations included depictions of Albert Einstein, balloons, ice cream cones, a carousel horse, a rose-covered tombstone, a surfer and an album cover of the rock band Journey.

“I like walking around here because every time I walk around, they’re completely different,” Principal Mary Ann Owsley said as she watched the creations emerge.

Owsley said she hoped that the program would teach students a bit of culture as well as foster a spirit of cooperation.

One homeroom decided to draw a portrait of classmate Paul Church, 14, who was hit by a truck as he rode his bicycle a couple of weeks ago. They planned to take a photo of the pavement picture and send it to Paul, who awoke from a coma this week, teacher Chris Plass said.

“This is my favorite one. It shows that we care and that we’re thinking of him,” said Kelsi Fisher, 14, who is not in Paul’s class but watched the picture’s progress anyway.

Thirteen-year-old Felicia Freiermuth’s class chose to draw a pastoral scene with a barn.

“We can use most of the colors in it, and it was easier than some of the other ones,” said Felicia, a seventh-grader. “It’s different than regular art class.”

She and other Santiago students raved about the work of Wenner. After demonstrating his techniques and showing the students slides Thursday, Wenner worked with 30 children to create a gold-and-blue dragon.

“I think it needs smoke,” said seventh-grader Danielle Schildts, 13, as she watched Wenner shading the dragon’s body with yellow chalk.

Wenner agreed and showed Danielle how to create a puff of smoke, outlining it in black, then softly shading it with blue and yellow.

Students flocked after Wenner, asking him for autographs and presenting him with a drawing imitating one of his sidewalk creations, which they had seen in a slide.

“I love his three-dimensional drawings,” Felicia said. “There was one that looked like a real well. I thought it was at first.”

At the end of the afternoon, both students and teachers were left with chalk on their hands, knees and faces--and a sense of accomplishment.

“This is neat. This is the kind of thing that should be going on at schools all over,” teacher Fryman said. “I think this teaches them that art is fun, that you don’t have to go to a stuffy museum to see art. You can create it.”