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Art's
Creativity Is At Work Helping
A lull has hit Peggy Maringer's Teen Art Explosion class at the Fayetteville High School's West Campus Technical Center. It's the beginning of the semester and students are still feeling shy, their initial forays into self-expression tempered by self-consciousness. The students sit, staring awkwardly at the long brown table scarred with remnants of paint, knife marks and clay. Maringer breaks the silence with an innovative idea. "Let's have a snowball fight!" "Now?" The students are startled, but Maringer's enthusiasm is contagious and within moments they all spill outside, whooping and laughing, ducking and dodging as snowballs fly. When the class bell rings and the first period students depart, Maringer fills a bowl with snow for her next class. "Make a snow sculpture," she invites them. Improvisation has turned a ho hum day into an adventure. To Maringer, that's precisely the point. Art can open doors into realms of creativity a person has blocked since childhood, she said, turning a colorless world into Technicolor. "If you can tear down some of those blocks in your head and let some fresh air in, suddenly life is fun again." Finding fun through creativity might be particularly important to students in the Teen Art Explosion program, Maringer believes. Her students, considered "at-risk" for substance abuse, need a positive alternative to the seduction of escaping their realities with drugs. Whether they are considered at-risk because of family, academic or economic circumstances or whether they know first-hand the realities of substance abuse, they all have to navigate the unfamiliar challenges of the teen years. The federally funded Teen Arts Explosion program hopes to give them a rudder with which to steer. "Being allowed to express themselves -- verbally as well as artistically -- in these classrooms is a very freeing experience," said program director Barbara Davis. "Having someone who actually listens to what's going on and values the students as individuals, who doesn't try to make them fit a specific mold, is good for these kids." Davis, who administers the program from the Jones Center For Families in Springdale, said the goal of the Teen Art Explosion is to increase students' confidence and sense of self-responsibility while offering them positive alternatives to drugs and alcohol. In addition to making art, students are required to participate in a weekly substance abuse awareness seminar. Counselors from Youth Bridge, a non-profit center for at-risk youth, present topics ranging from drugs and alcohol to dating, communication and anger management. Students continue exploring these topics through artwork and open discussion. "I feel it's really important that kids can have someplace to talk about these things without someone passing judgment on them," Maringer said. Learning the facts about drugs and alcohol is important, too. "They may pretend they know everything, but they don't -- they ask questions." The
West Campus program is one of three Teen Art Explosion programs
in Northwest Arkansas high schools. Springdale Nite School and
the Rogers Extended School Day program offer similar courses.
The program, begun in the fall of 1999 with a $100,000 grant
from the federal Drug Free Communities Support Program, serves
about 70 area teen-agers each session. Davis, who has a background in psychology and art, said people who describe themselves as creative tend to be less stressed, more satisfied and generally happier in their lives. National studies bear out Davis' assertion. The 1997 National Educational Longitudinal Survey shows that, compared with students in the general national sample, youth in arts programs are:
Because of results such as these, at first a surprise even to the researchers, art is becoming known as an "anti-drug." A brightly colored poster in Davis' office makes this point. "Art and music are the drugs of choice for millions of kids," the Fred Babb poster reads. "If we expect them to just say no to a chemical high, we must recognize the healing alternative: their own creativity. Demand and support the real anti-drug program -- arts in education." In fact, stimulating the creative center of the brain is a chemical high, Davis said. The same neurotransmitters are activated by art as are triggered by the use of illegal or controlled substances. "Art gets the same juices flowing." But unlike substance abuse, which generally has a negative effect on a person's life, using art as a "high" enhances the rest of a person's endeavors, Davis said. "Once you start stimulating the creative part of the mind, that spills over into the logical and rational parts." In addition to helping students academically, making art increases their sense of self-worth, self-confidence and self-control, Davis said. One of the key results the Teen Art Explosion could have on participants is shifting what psychologists term "locus of control," Davis said. "This is the extent to which you feel you have control over your own life. Do things happen because of you or do things happen to you?" The inner confidence developed in art programs carries over into the rest of students' curriculums and all of their lives, Davis said. She is conducting her own tests with Teen Art Explosion students. She administered the Norwicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale to new students in the program in January. She will repeat the test at the end of the current session. Davis is also testing for self-esteem, general attitudes and attitudes toward drugs. Not all students in the program have histories of substance abuse, Davis said. But many of them fall into the category of "at-risk." At-risk students include teen-age parents, abused and homeless students, youth offenders, minority students and potential dropouts, Davis said, as well as substance users and abusers. No class is typical, Davis stressed, but one might include teen-age mothers, youths on probation for drug offenses and academic low achievers. Students self-select the Teen Art Explosion classes, although guidance counselors might suggest them. Each of the schools offering the program is an alternative high school geared toward assisting such at-risk teens, among others, to complete their high school studies and earn their diplomas. Students earn fine art credit for taking the class. At the start of each session -- which runs between five and nine weeks, depending on the school -- students fall into two broad categories-those excited about taking a hands-on art class and those suffering through it for the credit. By the end of the semester, Davis said, those lines have blurred. She pointed to an art project done by Jake Wray of Fayetteville, which was part of an exhibit on display at the Jones Center in January. (Students' last names have been changed throughout to protect their privacy.) Jake's sculpture is made from old car parts, welded together and decorated with the emblems of his life-chewing tobacco cans and a confederate flag, on which he had painted "Heritage, not hate." "Jake started out wanting nothing to do with this class," Davis said. "He thought art was just drawing and painting. Then he realized art could be anything he wanted it to be -- whatever is beautiful and meaningful to him. Jake likes cars, so he made his sculpture out of car parts. Now he sees art differently." The class also gave Jake an avenue through which to explore different interpretations of a symbol he holds dear-the Confederate flag. Jake was genuinely surprised to find out that some people think the flag offensive, Davis said. He dismissed those ideas as foolish, at first, but a comment by a classmate Jake admired changed his views. He still incorporated the flag into his sculpture, but he added his own interpretation of what it means to him -- a symbol of pride in his Southern roots. --- The classes, aimed at impacting the whole of a young person's life, are not much like the traditional art classes many people remember from high school. Teachers ride a fine line between emphasizing process and product, Maringer said. Some days might find the students engrossed in creating a permanent piece of art while others are dedicated purely to loosening students up and getting them past their resistance to creativity. Maringer takes very seriously the concept of the "inner critic" -- the internalized voice that tells people that what they create is not good enough. The critic may keep them safe from humiliation, Maringer tells her students, but it will also deaden them to the joy and beauty of being alive. "If your creativity is blocked by these safety nets you've built up over years, life isn't much fun." Most people's art skills are on a third or fourth grade level, Maringer said, the age they began to stop taking chances and experiencing anything new. The result is a colorless world, Maringer believes. Teen-agers might turn to drugs and alcohol to try and recapture some of the joy in living they remember from younger years because "it's no fun living in their own minds." Art can reopen the doors to the magic of being alive. Maringer challenges her students to reach beyond conventional definitions of "good" and "bad." "If we call artwork 'good' -- if when we're done it's 'good' -- it might have achieved a level of accuracy that pleases us. But what if it doesn't? How else might our artwork be pleasing to us? "Make something you consider 'wrong,'" she tells her students. "It's going to be hard to do it wrong … Art can't hurt you." Students tend to keep their eyes on the projects in front of them, rather than on Maringer, when she talks. But her words sink in. "That's what messes me up -- trying to make it look good," one youth offers. Other students agree. They have all had the experience of enjoying their artwork while in the middle of it, they said, only to end up disliking it once it's done. That's the "inner critic" in action, Maringer tells them. Yet embracing their own imperfect representation of how they see the world is infinitely more satisfying than trying to duplicate somebody else's idea of "good" and "bad." "What I enjoy most about viewing art is seeing through somebody else's eyes for a minute," Maringer said. "We're stuck behind our own eyes most of the time." The revolving art exhibit at the Jones Center allows viewers to do just that -- see the world from the teen-agers' perspectives. Artwork encompasses a wide range of styles and mediums. Self-portraits, collages, sculptures, paintings, pastels and masks hang on walls and line tables. Some are as rudimentary as a child's scrawl; others are detailed and elaborate. All, in the artist's eyes, are art. In January's showing, Maringer had her students include an artist's statement with their work. These were sometimes as provocative as the art itself. A young artist named Carin Ford explained her piece, a black mask criss-crossed with cracks and streaks, this way: "I did this project not to cover up myself but for others to see the true-blue me. To me, this 'mask' is a second self of my inner self to show anyone and everyone how I feel sometimes inside. I am not the first or only one to feel like this inside. I feel like I finally want to come out and show the world who I am inside. After a few things that have happened in my life to me, I named this mask 'Charred and Broiled From Life.' I'm one of many who survive life's burns and scars. "Those who don't make it can end up like this outside as well as in. Sometimes, it's better for some to see how some of us are inside, and for some wearing a happy face is wearing the mask … Knowing who or what we are inside can help and heal the outside. Healing yourself, and being who you are can help your inner or outer self-depending on what you are hiding." The photograph of Carin included with her artist's statement showed a smiling girl with a round, pleasant face, a ski hat pulled low over her forehead. Tanya Johnson was all set to make a life-sized figure of a tree for her final project, Davis said, to represent her family tree. She went home on Friday and returned Monday with another idea -- she had decided to make an exploding trash can. "I always wonder what happened over the weekend to make her feel that way," Davis said. The chicken-wire cylinder is covered with brown cloth, filled with wadded up balls of paper and embellished with wire spirals erupting from it like tentacles or branches. A separate wire figure -- a small person -- stands apart from the giant trashcan. A painting, displayed with the rest of the piece, shows what could be giant teardrops against a background of red and black, with a disconnected eye and mouth floating between them. The name of Tanya's piece is "Too Much Trash Talk." Her artist statement explains it this way: "Mine represents the way I feel about my feelings sometimes. A lot of stuff that is said gets out of control. That is why I thought of a trash can. And the painting describes the effects that it has." Other students had more positive representations of their families. "Roses," a painting of large red blooms on a twisting vine, represents 16-year-old Nadine Storm's family. "They are stronger because they are together," Nadine wrote. "Us as one." Shane Marshall, a quiet 17-year-old who wants to become a cartoonist, seems to embody the creative confidence Maringer hopes to cultivate in all her students. "My artist statement is something of value," Shane wrote. "Art is something everyone should take serious, because I believe that art is all around you. You might think different. When you paint a building or design a car, to me it is all art. How flowers grow is art to me. Everything is some sort of art. Somebody might think that your art is bad, but that is your art and don't care what everybody thinks because it doesn't matter. My color arrangement picture frame [one of Shane's pieces in the art exhibit] is my art and I don't think that people should judge my art but if they choose to do that, it is their problem. This is my artist statement." A class project from another session illustrated Shane's theory that "art is all around you." The collaborative piece made from a collection of discarded materials took the form of a colorful assortment of people made from bits of Styrofoam, Mylar tape, wire, clay and beads. "These people are made from things that most people find useless," one of the artists, R.H., wrote in an accompanying statement. "They were thrown away when no one needed them anymore. They live in the trash because most think that these people are just odd pieces of this and that. Maybe people should look more deeply into their world to see that they're not trash, but colorful imagination." The worlds those imaginations can visit often reflect a reality not always seen from the outside. Jessica Jones built a house from Popsicle sticks and adorned the roof with feathers. Everything in the piece is bright, like the set of a whimsical Disney film. Looking at the house, no one would suspect the tiny figure hidden away beneath the steep gables, or guess at the piece's title: "Lonely." "I am a very unique person, and so is everyone else in their own personal way," Jessica's artist statement reads. "I made this house out of Popsicle sticks, feathers and hot glue. It represents the way I feel. The lonely person in bed in the attic is I. Trapped all alone. Stuck in an awful rut." In person, Jessica is as bright as her house-smiling, friendly, with an aura of social ease. One wouldn't guess, meeting her for the first or second or tenth time, at some of the challenges the 16-year-old has faced. Jessica has spent four months in a drug treatment facility, was kicked out of her house at age 15, spent time on the road as a runaway, has a baby and lives with her boyfriend far from her parents' home. "I feel like the worst person in the world," she said. But then, "I just don't let things get to me." The Teen Art Explosion has had an impact, Jessica said. "It's helping me to get over things and not live in the past." Maringer doesn't flinch at the details of her students' lives, no matter how raw or shocking. Instead, she helps them to see how their struggles can also be a gift. "It's kind of like jewels," she said one morning. "Often when you find a raw jewel, it's not very light-reflective. Sometimes the jeweler has to make some pretty severe cuts. Being a human being is like that. Life is the jeweler that makes the cuts. And then you see what we really are-beautiful, light-reflecting beings." Conversations like these are commonplace in Maringer's classrooms. Her open style allows spontaneous discussion to arise as teens work on their art. Often the students take over the role of mentoring each other. As they talk, they hear their own experiences reflected in each other's stories, Maringer said, complete with choices they wish they hadn't made. One conversation, like many, revolved around the part alcohol and drugs play in some youngsters' lives. "Beer drinking is part of American culture," said Jake, the boy with the confederate flag and engine sculpture. "For some Americans," Lindsey shot back. "They teach each other a lot," Maringer said. "They teach me a lot." The students have mixed emotions about the alcohol-and drug-counseling component of the program, which might be a film on the physiology of drinking one week and a floor-scale version of the board game "Life" the next. "It's nonsense," Shane said impatiently. "You know what's right and what's wrong." For Alexandra Ramirez, though, an 18-year-old from Puebla, Mexico, the counseling helped her name a problem she didn't even know she had. "It opened my eyes to many things I didn't know about me." She had dabbled in cocaine and marijuana use while at home in Puebla, but didn't see those things as a problem. After nine weeks of Youthbridge lectures, that perception had changed. Now, Ramirez is living drug free, she said, determined to make her own choices, rather than letting substance abuse control her. "I used to think it's not important [to maintain control over drug use]. But it is." Davis invited students from the first year of the program to a reunion at the Jones Center in December. Only one student showed up, she said, but "considering some of the challenges these kids have, we thought that was pretty good." The boy's response was validation enough. "He said the program changed his life. He felt freer to express himself-he said he found his voice." Before the Teen Art Explosion classes, the boy did drugs because he didn't know how to say no, he told Davis. Afterward, he had the confidence to speak out, not only for himself but when his friends made poor decisions, too. --- The program was the brainchild of three people -- Frank Taylor, director of the Rogers Extended School Day program, Grace Donaho, director of education at the Jones Center, and Jim Smith, director of the Northwest Arkansas Prevention Resource Center. Smith is a professional grant writer working in substance abuse prevention; Taylor and Donaho have been intimately involved with youth education throughout their careers. Taylor had given his students a survey designed to determine their attitudes in the areas of school, family, self-esteem, values and drug and alcohol use. "I wanted to know what kind of problems my students have," he said. "If you're going to work with students, you need to know where they're coming from." Results showed that most students were clustered on the cusp between "needs improvement" and "critical," with others falling well into the "critical" and "most critical" ranges. Taylor was concerned. Searching for solutions, he remembered an experimental art program begun during his tenure as principal of the Mary Grimes Education Center, the oldest alternative school in Texas. The program, which brought art into all parts of the curriculum, had a miraculous effect on both students and teachers, Taylor said. "The teachers were excited about it, the students were excited about it … The kids took ownership in that school." The sense of ownership is vital for young people, especially those without a family or community base to belong to, Taylor said. In essence, the school becomes their family. "School is more than social studies and science and reading and writing and math. School is about helping young people become adults. We are role models, whether we like it or not." Taylor spoke with Donaho, a mover and shaker in many Northwest Arkansas youth programs, about the Grimes art program and his desire to create something similar for the students in his current school. "Let's write a grant," he reports that she said. "I don't know how to write a grant," he replied. "I know someone who does," she said. Smith, a professional grant writer specializing in substance-abuse prevention, had been traveling along similar paths himself. He was particularly disturbed by a trend later substantiated by a 1999 Arkansas Communities That Care survey, he said. The survey showed that although Northwest Arkansas is on the low end of the scale for substance abuse in the younger grades, the figures flip-flop when students reach high school age. In fact, the only significant increase in teen drug use statewide from 1998 to 1999 was in Northwest Arkansas, where marijuana use among high school students rose. "It seems like we're doing a pretty good job [of substance abuse prevention] when kids are young," Smith said, "but when they get into high school we have this explosion of drug use." Yet existing prevention programs seemed aimed at students in elementary, middle and junior high schools. The Teen Art Explosion program seeks to reach children already in the vulnerable high school years. A teacher in Taylor's school reported that when students complained, "You think we're all a bunch of druggies," he replied: "No, I just know there's a lot of temptation." In
addition to making art and receiving life skills counseling,
students in the program gain from the mentoring relationship
between themselves and their teachers, Smith said. To this end,
teachers were chosen for their mentoring ability and their role
modeling as professional artists rather than traditional teaching
experience. As their plan matured, Taylor, Smith and Donaho began to involve other interested people in the project. Soon, the Northwest Arkansas Coalition Against Alcohol and Drugs was born. This is a regional network of people working together to slow or stop substance abuse among area youth, Smith said. The grant he wrote, funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Department of Prevention, incorporated two elements with proven track records of success in raising students' self-esteem and lowering rates of drug and alcohol use: art and mentoring. "The art or science of [substance abuse] prevention has advanced remarkably in the past 15 years," he said. "Prevention is going toward science-based prevention work-those programs with evaluations and research that show results." Smith cited several art mentoring programs with documented records of effectiveness. The Urban smARTS program in San Antonio, Texas, showed these benefits: Participants showed improvement in communication and teamwork and in their attitudes toward school, self-esteem, self-efficacy, positive peer associations and resistance to peer pressure. Fewer program participants had new court referrals during the evaluation period than did comparison youth and the offenses which were committed were less severe than those committed prior to the start of the program. Mentoring is also a documented way to help at-risk youth, Smith said. The federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Program's 1998 Report to Congress stated that "[a] mentor's presence can provide a youth with personal connectedness, supervision and guidance, skills training, career or cultural enrichment opportunities, a knowledge of spirituality and values, a sense of self-worth, and perhaps most important, goals and hope for the future." Davis is making plans for another program -- a summer program for younger children in which Teen Art Explosion alumni will be the mentors. Davis envisions involving participants in beautifying the community-whether it is painting murals for Head Start, making mosaics on park benches or inspiring nursing home residents to make art. "Studies show that if kids feel a part of their community -- a sense of belongingness -- they are less likely to do drugs," Davis said. Paying high school students to mentor younger children will be a tremendous boost to their sense of self-esteem, she said. --- It's the beginning of a new session at the Fayetteville West Campus Technical Center and students in the Teen Art Explosion program are just settling in. They work quietly with globs of clay, each student shaping the raw material into a reflection of his or her inner life. A mother and child scene comes into view -- an Indian woman cradling her baby. The work is detailed and meticulous, the figures' faces reflecting stoicism the young artist either knows or wishes she did. At the other end of the oblong table, a boy sculpts a head. Even the horns coming from the forehead can't hide the beauty of the piece; the artist's own face is reflected in the clay. Another boy shapes the parts of a truck. Wheels, body and engine parts emerge. He puts them together with obvious pride. When it comes time to transfer his work from the table to a more permanent display shelf, however, the pieces fall apart. The boy's confidence crumbles with the clay. He doesn't try to put the truck together again. Maybe by the end of the session, he will. Maybe, like other students who have gone through the program, he will learn that creativity comes from the inside out and that every piece of art -- like every human being -- is worthy of another chance.
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