Keeping the Flame of Devotion to the Arts Burning for 20 Years

There they were, 70 professional artists and musicians being urged to simplify their creative energy by a barefoot Minnesotan in paint-speckled overalls.

“I call it Cardboard 101,” said Sandy Spieler, artistic director of In the Heart of the Beast, a Minneapolis-based puppet and mask theater.

The diverse group of artists--whose work spans modern dance, Peruvian harp music and aluminum art--will use cardboard, paint and other basic tools to design masks of plants, fish, animals and people, part of a three-day artists retreat in Eagle Rock that began Thursday.

The masks will be taken to area schools, where hundreds of children will use them as inspiration for their own designs to wear at “pARTy,” a countywide, family arts festival being sponsored by the Music Center next spring.

The event will end an eight-month anniversary celebration of 20 years of arts education provided by the Music Center, which hires professional artists from countries and cultures around the world. Barbara Leonard, artistic director for the center’s education division, said the festival will be “a little like jazz,” embracing all art forms.

The Music Center has helped keep art and music alive in classrooms across five Southern California counties in the years since the passage of Proposition 13, when such programs were pared down.

Since 1979, the center’s education division has grown to the third-largest program of its kind in the country, with an annual budget of $4.4 million and a curriculum that reaches tens of thousands of students each year, said program founder Joan Boyett.

Even though public schools today are experiencing an arts renaissance, educators from five counties continue to rely on the Music Center for dance, music and theatrical assemblies and artist workshops--all presented at reduced rates. Schools can even hire artists in residence.

The artists say that they love the arrangement, even though a few recall being reluctant at first to teach students.

“But I showed up and presented what I did and--wow!--they were just talking about it and asking me questions, so I’ve kept coming back,” said visual artist Elaine Wilson.

“I love the surprise on the children’s faces” when they see what they create, said Olga Ponce Furginson, a papel picado expert, who for 14 years has taught students the ancient paper-cutting art practiced in Mexico, as well as various other forms from around the world.

What they teach the students goes beyond art, said composer John Zeretzke. He is writing a score for the May festival, at which a performance will feature as many as 300 instruments from around the world.

“I show them how music relates to math and science,” he said. “They learn that art just does not stand alone.”

Other artists, such as Navajo storyteller Geri Keams, said the interaction with students provides a chance to erase stereotypes and expose students to other cultures.

She reworks traditional stories for the TV generation, Keams said, using animal voices and gestures to keep their attention.

Gwen Barthelme, a teacher at the city’s Lanterman High School for disabled children, is a strong supporter of the Music Center education program. She said it has brought folkloric and country music, mime and other performing arts to students who have few opportunities outside of school to experience such performances.

Her school has requested six assemblies each year for at least the past 13 years, she said. “Any type of extra stimulation is so valuable,” she said.

Other schools, such as Farragut Elementary in Culver City, were forced to give up the performances last year because they couldn’t afford them.

“Our problem is population growth,” said Sue Newman, the school secretary. In 1997, she said, she booked 10 Music Center assemblies at Farragut. With the increased number of students, the campus would have had to book twice as many performances, which cost about $500 each, she said. Still, she added, the school hopes to bring the assemblies back this year.

Boyett hopes so too. Although she is not expecting her program to grow as rapidly as it has in the past, her goal now is to enhance the quality of existing offerings and to find new ways to accommodate demand for art at local schools.