A Different Drill

I first saw the Alternate Routes Art Bus two years ago at a street festival in South Los Angeles. Jazz and blues bands were entertaining an enthusiastic audience, and the streets were lined with art and food booths.

Amid the revelry, one thing seemed totally out of place. It looked like a huge yellow-and-blue cloud tethered to the drab blacktop. In fact, it was a big, old-fashioned school bus painted to look like a cloudy blue sky. Arrayed across the bus’ exterior mural was a caravan of brightly painted tools and toys. Stepping inside was like stepping into a pine-scented, handsome wood sculpture--a work of art itself.

This workshop on wheels, I learned, allows inner-city students ages 5 through 11 to use basic, hand-operated woodworking tools to build simple projects. Artist-instructor Otono Lujan imparts fundamental concepts of safety, creativity, discipline, proportion and order to students such as 9-year-old Tiffany, whom I watched one day craft a wooden replica of a message beeper. “Oh, now, where’s my thingy thing?” she asked no one in particular.

The 3-year-old program, modeled on the innovations of San Diego teacher Sheila Dawson, was developed in Los Angeles by Side Street Projects, the nonprofit arts organization designed to “help define art of the future” across cultures and disciplines.

“We go over the basic processes at the beginning of the classes, and we add things as the students advance, depending on age and ability,” Lujan says. After four to 10 sessions, the students will have created a finished toy or simple wood sculpture, such as a mock cell phone or a memo pad, as well as achieved a genuine sense of accomplishment.

I’ve been back three times since, and never tire of the experience. On a typical day, the Art Bus parks on the grounds of a participating local school or community center and comes alive with students wearing Pokemon T-shirts and baggy jeans. They’re soon powdered with sawdust as they work with saws, drills, clamps, squares, screwdrivers, sandpaper, guides and glue. Walking into the bus mid-session is like walking into the workshop of eager and extremely hip elves.