Student Colors Outside the Lines : Artist Ann Morgan is drawn out at Hope University in Anaheim, the nation’s only private fine arts college for the gifted mentally retarded.

There isn’t much distance between Ann Morgan and her art, only about three inches as she hunches over to get close to the sheet of paper she’s amending with a nearly dry ink marker.

As the stuffed notebooks of art works before it, the page is slowly filling with a complex, otherworldly weave of color. Much as a bebop jazz player might flood a melody with a torrent of notes where one would do, Morgan puts a rich, Guatemalan tapestry of hues into spots where one might expect a single color to dominate.

What the 41-year-old does, passionately, is color , filling sheet after sheet of photocopied coloring book pages with flowing swaths of colors that seem to cause the drawings to move. In two sacks she carries pounds of ink markers and crayons of every shade, and she employs nearly all of them. “Except for black,” she says. “I almost never use black. I like color too much.”

For all the focused concentration Morgan brings to bear on a coloring-book page, the simple printed messages, such as “Over here, Spider Man!” are beyond her. Morgan has Down’s syndrome, a congenital disorder that can cause mental retardation. As with her classmates at Hope University, Morgan’s artistic abilities far surpass her facility at the rudimentary skills that most of us rely on to make it through life.

The Anaheim-based organization may not look like much--just a few rooms at the back of an aging Korean Presbyterian church--but Hope University is the nation’s only private fine arts college for the gifted mentally retarded.

The nonprofit, minimal-tuition facility is home to the nationally famed Hi Hopes band, and the student body boasts a few true savants, such as musicians who can hear a complex piece of music once and play it precisely.

Morgan may not be quite so obviously gifted, but she is certainly devoted, according to Lynette Law, the university’s only full-time teacher.

“It’s what she wants to do all the time.” Law said. “Ann doesn’t like to go on vacation with her family unless she can do her art. She’ll come back from a weekend with folders filled with it. Sometimes if we’re doing something like the music and she’s not so involved, she’ll scoot off and do her art. She’s much better about it now, though. She used to just be like, ‘Don’t bother me,’ and she would sneak off to sit in a nearly dark room and do her art by herself.”

“I was kind of sad,” Morgan explained. “I was scared. I didn’t know what was going on in class.”

Her speech can be clear and direct, although at times she gets flustered. Then her hand defensively goes in front of her mouth, and she’s harder to understand.

Through the university’s music, drama and video projects, she’s learning about speaking up and maintaining eye contact. “I never looked at people at all,” Morgan said. “I saw on the video tape of me that I used to close my eyes.”

The idea of Hope University’s “arts-infused curriculum” is to teach students about themselves and their abilities through the communicative power of art. As do many others afflicted with Down’s, Morgan has difficulty with changes or breaks in the routine. If she’s due to start working on music at 1 p.m., Law has to start readying her for the change at noon.

Morgan has come to like the music and drama she used to shy from, although she still looked a little distracted when performing a Hi Hopes “Up With Everything”-type music-and-dance number. It’s when seated outside, at a circular picnic bench with her markers and paper, that she seemed complete and relaxed.

Waiting for her attention were a stack of pages photocopied for coloring books and drawings by other students. “I made these for the whole class, but Ann just commandeered them,” Law said.

When Law arrived at Hope University two years ago, Morgan’s art ability was stuck unpromisingly in one place. “I was mostly doing tracing before Lynette came. I’d take a pencil and some art paper and trace all day. When Lynette came she pushed me to do new things a little bit,” Morgan said.

Although Law has to divide her time among 26 demanding students, there’s an obvious affection between her and Morgan. Law’s home, the teacher said, is full of Morgan’s art, which she said inspires her. Asked why she’s willing to try frightening new projects, Morgan said, “I do it for Lynette.”

She’s working on doing her own freehand drawing now, and one looks like a Guatemalan Picasso Mr. Potato Head. She doesn’t have much interest in the museum art she’s been exposed to, liking only the brash, grafitti-influenced stick-people art of the late New York artist Keith Haring. Generally, she prefers the motion and color of animation, particularly in Fox TV’s “The Simpsons” and Disney’s full-length movie “Bedknobs and Broomsticks.”

Morgan’s work has been exhibited at the Orange County Fair, where it took a ribbon, at Beverly Hills’ Hansen Gallery in “A Very Special Art Exhibit” and in a variety of local exhibits, such as one of painted palm bark masks on display at the Cypress Public Library.

“I feel wonderful when people come to see my art,” Morgan said with a small grin. “My goal is to do a lot more stuff. I want to get better and better at the drama and my speech, to make it loud and clear. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t. Some people can read and some can talk well, but they can sit around at night and talk about nothing.” She added, laughing, “Lots of people do that, but I don’t. I’m busy doing my color work or doing freehand.”

When the word retarded came up in conversation, Morgan blanched. “People tease me sometimes, and I walk away. I walk away fast,” she said.

Law said, “I leave here every day going, ‘Who’s the retarded one here?’ The students understand so many things about being good to each other. They’re very supportive of each other, and they really take care of each other. And you can watch them grow more independent. There’s a preconception that all these people are good for is sorting or assembly jobs. But listen to Ann and how excited she is about growing.

“A lot of times they drug people like this to keep them calm and sedated so they won’t be a problem. I think they should be giving us the drugs, to help us be more patient and let them go through some of these things. There’s so many things that they can do. It just needs effort and patience put into it.”