Eastwood to Be Honored, but Students Are Stars

Clint Eastwood, a front-runner for this year’s best director Oscar, will be honored Friday night at the Fourth Annual Governor’s Awards for the Arts. But the real purpose of the gala is to raise money to train the teen-ager from Watts or Modesto who could be the Eastwood of tomorrow.

As Wendy Goldberg, one of the organizers, explained, the event at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel is to benefit the California State Summer School for the Arts Scholarship Fund. The fund helps talented California high school students attend an intensive, monthlong residential training program in one of seven artistic disciplines: the visual arts, dance, music, theater, creative writing, film and video, and animation.

This summer, the program will take place on the Valencia campus of the California Institute of the Arts.

Goldberg, a Westsider who helped found the school and is president of the CSSSAS Foundation, said such a program is vital, given the bone-deep cuts school budgets have suffered in recent years. “So many schools don’t have the arts anymore because so many districts can’t afford them,” she said.

Robert Jaffe, director of the summer school, agreed. California spends less on education per pupil than any other industrialized state in the nation, he said--$4,500 a year.

According to Jaffe, one result of the state’s education budget cuts has been a steady decline in the number of arts educators. In 1978, the state had one music teacher for every 400 students in the public schools, he said. In 1991, the ratio was one to 1,570.

Jaffe said about 1,300 students auditioned last year for 435 slots at the school, which is jointly funded by the state and donations. By law, no student who qualifies is turned away because he or she cannot pay the $1,150 tuition (which includes room and board). About half the participants receive some kind of aid.

Students are recruited from all over the state, with an eye to diversity, Jaffe said. All the youngsters accepted have exceptional artistic talent, he said. Some are first-rate all-around students, he said, “and some are achieving only in the arts.”

About 2,300 students have participated since the school opened in 1987. Most of the graduates are still in college and have not yet embarked on professional careers. But Goldberg and Jaffe point to such up-and-coming alumni as singer Puff Johnson, who is under contract to Columbia Records.

They also cite Shane Shinook Kim, who will perform at the gala. “Kim has a voice like Domingo or Pavarotti and the personality to match,” Jaffe said. Kim had been in the United States less than a year and was trained only in Korean music when he attended the 1988 session, Jaffe said.

Clint Eastwood will be honored at the gala with the Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in Entertainment. Other honorees include Los Angeles-based artist Robert Graham, who will receive the award for visual arts, presented by actor Steve Martin; and jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, who will receive the award for performing arts presented by Natalie Cole.

Arts benefactor Gordon P. Getty will receive the individual patron award presented by Placido Domingo, and actor Leonard Nimoy will present the award for literary arts to writer Ray Bradbury.

Gov. Pete Wilson will present a special tribute award to Audrey Geisel in honor of her late husband, Theodor Geisel, much better known as Dr. Seuss.

Goldberg’s co-chairs are Susan Dolgen and Anne Johnson.

Tickets for the gala are $250 and are available by calling (818) 501-3106.