Children Can Deck the Walls at Gallery

A 1-year-old uses the wall to create public art with his own handprint. He likes what he sees and showers himself with a round of applause, an action that makes a statement--and a mess.

A few feet away, a Long Beach third-grader paints a big blue acrylic angel on a cross. Her friend adds fluttering gossamer wings to a bird-in-progress.

It is the second annual “Make Your mARK” holiday paint-in, a free, two-week community event sponsored by ARK (Artists Reaching Kids), a nonprofit art center on 4th Street in Long Beach in an area known for the funky chic of its art galleries and thrift stores. Every afternoon from now through Dec. 22, ARK will open its 2,000-square-foot gallery to children of all ages to participate in a happening that ranges from painting the walls to making holiday gifts.

Long Beach muralist Greg Pickens, executive director of ARK, says several hundred children participated in the event last December. Since the Long Beach Children’s Museum closed in February 1995, he says, ARK has been the only local organization dedicated exclusively to providing children with arts education.

“It’s really obvious how little art kids are getting at school,” Pickens says. “They come here and get paintbrushes and explode paint all over the walls. They’ve never had such a free-wheeling experience. . . . It’s a sense of being able to really cut loose.”

Sometimes the teenagers and adults who are participating in ARK’s performance of “Godspell,” which opens this weekend, help paint the walls. The musical will be the inaugural performance of the ARK Players, a performance troupe in which teenagers work with professional actors.

“The walls the children create are the backdrop for ‘Godspell,’ Pickens says. “It’s an explosion of the senses.”