Arts Center trip

Had an interesting experience last week, gentle readers. Thought I’d share it with you. (Excuse the lack of first person pronouns, been on a minimalist kick lately)
Accompanied my wife, Roxanne and Hazen high School art teacher Monica Caviness and a gaggle of their students to The Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock. Museums, including art museums, are among my favorite places in the world, along with baseball parks and fishing lakes. All these places give me relaxation, contentment, stimulation and education, four things I value highly.
What do I find educational at a baseball park or a fishing lake, you ask? Plenty. Baseball parks are wonderful places to observe the human animal in all his or her dynamic complexity, and fishing lakes provide opportunities to experience the wonders of Mother Nature at their most glorious.
But I digress.
Never can tell when a young person of high school age will say or do something unexpectedly insightful. For the most part, folks in that age bracket are not known for their tendency to insight. They really haven’t experienced enough yet to form a set of impressions by which to compare things. Considering the composition of this group, the possibilities were virtually limitless. They were, to say the least, eclectic. Or as eclectic as you can get in a community where almost everybody is related.
There were cheerleaders, jocks, artistic types, introverts, extroverts, air heads, hard heads, red necks, rough necks, closet intellectuals and Liskos. As I have noted previously in this space, it is almost impossible to assemble a random group of people on this part of the earth’s surface and not catch a Lisko or two in your net. Not that this is a bad thing. Quite the contrary. I’ve always found that the inclusion of a Lisko adds spice to any mixture.
The trip was enlightening for some and pretty much enjoyable for everybody. The permanent collection at the Arts Center is nothing to be sneered at, and includes works by Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gough, and numerous other famous artists as well as bronze sculptures by Auguste Rodin (the guy who did “The Thinker”) among others. For a small art museum in a city not known for its multicultural sophistication, the Arkansas Arts Center is quite a nice place to visit. And on top of that it’s free, although they encourage donations.
I think everybody enjoyed the opportunity to view the various works of art, although some of the students didn’t exactly find this to be their cup of tea. But unlike some other expeditions I’ve been on with young folks lately, everyone was at least willing to let other people get some enjoyment out of the experience even if they themselves would have rather been at a monster truck rally.
I was particularly touched by the reaction several of the young people had to a full length portrait in oils of a young girl in a white dress, and a pencil and charcoal drawing of a teenage girl in a letter jacket, jeans and a turtle neck sweater.
It all depends on what you identify with, I suppose.
One of the young ladies in the group, Katie Lisko (funny how that name keeps cropping up, isn’t it?) chided me because I couldn’t identify the building in New York which provided the artist’s perspective for a view of the Broadway theater district, as seen from about 30 stories above. I made my excuse that I haven’t been to New York in many years and don’t maintain a photographic memory of a bird’s eye view of the place. That wasn’t good enough for Katie, though. She made a point of mentioning to her friends that she’d asked me a question I couldn’t answer.
Personally, I was just delighted that she had the insight to consider not just the scene she was looking at, but also the place from which the artist had to view it to make the drawing.
Like I said, you never can tell when a young person will bowl you over with unexpected insight.