Sex.e Art int he Schools ~ Flower Power!
~Artist~
Arizona and LA la Land.... this is for you!
SEX.e I knew that would get your attention:
Go to the site and the fair to protect art in the schools hope your kids
matter!
http://www.millionartistmarch.com/elements/Artflyer.html
Why do the arts & kids matter?
Maybe cyclic economics ?
or....
Artist Mattison Fitzgerald adds Columbines to 'Flower Power'
Series
July 12, 1999, Silicon Valley, San Jose, Ca.... Over the last year, I
have been working on a series of paintings called 'Flower Power'.
Today, I added a grouping of columbines to the series as a message
to American Artists and parents world wide to stand up for support
of creativity and the arts in your schools and neighborhoods and
communities.
It is apparrent to me that why we are seeing youth in
America today continue to destroy each other is that we are
witnessing the first generation of kids who were raised without the
arts in their schools.
The fad for cutting the arts from schools has appeared to have
caught up with us in a very destructive trend of killings and suicides
as a release of frustration. Cutting of the arts has become a grave
and destructive mistake and our youth are paying for it in many
ways and even with their lives.
It is important for people to understand that when the arts were
removed from schools that what was removed was a venue for
understanding differences. When they cut the music programs they
removed a venue for developing achievement. When they removed
the dance and drawing classes they removed a mode of
communication that consistently allowed the arts to give a venue
and a way to support differences in everyone and allowed an
avenue for improvement of self esteem for young people.
The arts are of great importance to the cultural fabric of developed
countries and as we see a decline of the arts we see a decline of the
culture in total. Just like the Romans verses the Greeks in art
history.
Today the demise of the arts can be translated to what we
are experiencing in the shootings of young people like in America
or suicides of youth in Japan. It is important that the arts be
employed at very heightened levels in our societies and cultures in
order to seek improvement and healing of the individual.
Heightened attention to coursework in the arts in schools around
America and elsewhere will allow people to understantd
themselves, will allow them to grow, develop, heal and improve in
areas where science and sports do not reach. Heightened support
of the arts will allow young people and communities to reach into
their souls, it will give them places to succeed in ways they would
never have tapped without the christening of a mural, without the
applause after performance. The arts allows the ability for kids to
dance at the sea and feel comfortable in simply expressing joys or
sorrows in forms that words cannot.
Just like the Columbine in a series of paintings as a mark in time, the
ability to express feelings in ways that connect us without words has
geat value. The arts ability to empower thought that can
inspire others can build self esteem through symbolism and
symbolism is a powerful tool for leadership. This type of thinking
and communicating is learned through the arts.
By requiring the arts in the neighborhoods and in your childrens
lives you will be giving these kids a place to create, a place to grow
strong, a place to vent, a place to understand themselves, a place
to understand each other and a place to celebrate differences. By
allowing the arts in schools you will at the same time be allowing
the kids to develop key and important differences in themselves
that can also aid the development of strong self images and their
ability to understand the differences in others.
As it appears today, your kids lives quite well may depend on it. It
is important to demand that freedom of expression and arts
programs be added back into the National Education programming
for American kids and teens.
As I think back to my school years in a place just like Columbine
High School I can still remember the first and last names of jocs
who picked on the nerds. I remember as an artist at that school
how I hated seeing people treat each other that way.
I can remember how happy I was that my family valued creativity
enough to let me mature in mine as a place to escape and develop
on my own. I can remember that they allowed me to use the arts to
become an individual that valued my own differences and used
them as strengths to value other differences and strenghts for me
to succeed. I remember thinking how sorry I felt for the kids whos
parents did not allow the arts or did not value the arts they seemed
to have been missing so much.
Today, I wonder if all those kids at Columbine High might have
developed better images of themselves and their peers had they
been cultivated more each in their own creativity and freedom of
expression through the arts? I wonder had they had more
opportunities in the arts in their early years that they might have
understood differences of others and learned to be more tolerant of
those differences? I wonder had they had more exposure to the arts
and various dimensions of differences might they still be alive
today?
Artists know how understanding artwork adds to understanding
self. Artists know that through understanding you learn to accept
cultural differences by being different yourself. Artists learn that by
being different you are ok and you learn to tolerate more in
yourselves and in others.
Artists learn all this through the arts and artists bring much to the
world through diverse thought and questioning and sharing of ideas.
All the things those parents at Columbine wish now that they could
have shared with their kids to understand what was really going on
behind that tradgey but it is now to late to ask.
The Columbine blossom is now added to the 'Flower Power' series.
That series of paintings was concieved from a poetic dimension of
life which included personal and global tradgies, leadership,
moments, color, love and a positive wish for the future.
I think we would all agree that is what 'Flower Power' is about. I
think we would all agree that the columbine belongs in that flower
series as a symboic reminder that we all need to address the
symbolism of the flower power meanings through the arts.
I think we all need to pray that it is not to late to reach a generation
of kids. I think we need to recognize that the arts can teach the kids
that peace, love and creativity are important values that can be
cultivated through differences and revered in ourselves and others
throught the arts and we can teach them through the arts that care
matters.
Mattison Fitzgerald
Artist
http://www.rhinodevcom/M
mat...@netcom.com
ps. It is funny how all the arts funding these days is slated for kids
which is important. But I also look at stats for violence in the home
and I wonder if the parents need it too! Just another reasn to
supports the art on all levels.
J.R.
Artist's keyboard:
>
>It is apparrent to me that why we are seeing youth in
>America today continue to destroy each other is that we are
>witnessing the first generation of kids who were raised without the
>arts in their schools.
>
never would have happened?
Maybe on your planet but not here on Earth.
Those two characters, two of approximately 30 million American high school
students, were mentally ill. The fact that the story gripped the
headlines for weeks proves that it was a horrible abberation and that
American kids overall are NOT "continuing to destroy" each other, nor are
they anymore twisted, immoral or insensitive than any other generation of
teenagers. Let's try to remember that.
-JR
Adam Kippes
> Those two characters, two of approximately 30 million American high school
> students, were mentally ill.
30 million? Not unless the average high school "career" lasts about eight
years!
>The fact that the story gripped the headlines for weeks proves that it was a horrible
> abberation and that American kids overall are NOT "continuing to destroy" each other,
> nor are they anymore twisted, immoral or insensitive than any other generation of
> teenagers. Let's try to remember that.
True. Their great misfortune is to have *my* generation as their parents; I
truly feel sorry for kids today.
-- AK
--
adam....@pobox.com
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