[ad_1]
Even kids with sparkling white T-shirts were emerging relatively unscathed from their turns with semi-loaded paint trays, brushes and an emerging mural. They persevered with precision, daubing morning-sun yellows, heliotrope and wheat tones onto the side of Youth Haven’s emergency receiving cottage.
Paul Arsenault, on the other hand, looked as if he is the mural. His limited-edition Earth Day T-shirt picked up echoes of those tones, and every time he came over to talk to you there was a fresh spatter of a different color on him: face, gloves, arms.
Modern greats: Louis-Dreyfus exhibit at Naples Art has Claes Oldenberg, Red Grooms
AND: Springsteen ticket shock: What’s the most you’d pay for a concert ticket and who would it be?
Arsenault, one of Naples’ most familiar art names, had good reason to look like a palette. He was spending last week working with 25 residents at the residential shelter for children at risk or between full-time guardianship.
Everglades provide multilevel material
In shifts of four or five, kids showed up to create Everglades grasses, the rosy undersides of wood stork wings, frizzy heads of ferns and palms, the tawny back of a Florida panther.
Their “paint dad” coached them, offering explanations as they worked: “See how the grasses bend that way? You don’t want to cover up all the purple that’s underneath them, because that’s their shadow.”
There were good things happening on so many levels that Linda Goldfield, CEO of Youth Haven, could hardly count them. When the group is finished, she’ll toast with them — the kids and Arsenault will christen their work with an apple juice reception.
“We’ve been working on this campus to create a more sanctuary-like environment, to create more normalcy for our children. We’re a beautiful 18½-acre campus, but what struck me when I joined the agency was that it didn’t feel very colorful, youthlike,” she said.
Arts win: Collier, Lee arts fully funded in latest state budget
The shelter began looking for artists to add some works to the campus buildings, inside and out, and Goldfield met Arsenault during a tour of his home studio for Leadership Collier Arts Day.
“I’ve always admired his work. He’s an icon who’s lived and worked in this community for 50 years. We’re celebrating our 50th anniversary, so I approached him,” she said. “Fast forward to today, and here we are!”
“Art therapy is a significant component of our campus. There’s so much healing that takes place with art. Children who have difficulty communicating their trauma or communicating in general, you can put paintbrushes in their hands and they create beautiful artwork.
“We have a lot of talented budding young artists. I think it’s incredible for them to have the opportunity to have a role model like Paul, who has been able, with his craft, to create a career — for children to see that that is an option for them.”
As she talked, Arsenault poured little rivers of color into plastic tubs, ready for the 12- to 15-year-olds in this group to swipe on in the shade of the eaves. The mid-morning sun blazed around their umbrella covered materials table; everything they needed to accomplish would have to be done before noon, when the skies would begin to furrow into brows of afternoon rain.
Arsenault became ‘art dad’ for a week
Part of their arts education involved no paint. The first day of their mural work for the young painters was learned project assistantship. Arsenault brought out the painting they would be working from: a piece painted for Earth Day last year, explained his mission for the painting and for the mural that they would be helping him with. They looked at photos of his work to better understand his relaxed, yet intentional, strokes.
The concept of being an art master to 25 apprentices gave Arsenault only a quick pause.
“I thought, ‘Oh God,” he said. And then: “‘OK. We can do that.'” A longtime champion of Everglades restoration, he felt working with the Earth Day piece would also give him a chance to talk with the youngsters about the creatures that prowl its roughly 25-by-9 inch wall “canvas.”
75-plus things to do: In August: Open mic night, super moon stroll coming
More to do: Supermoon’s final show gets a party at Corkscrew in Naples, with nocturnal creatures chiming in
The Arsenault & Co. work is the first, but not the last, collaboration Goldfield hopes will happen between local artists and the children at Youth Haven.
“We have grownups who come back and say, ‘I lived on this campus,’ and I think it’s wonderful that when this group of teens is old enough they’ll be able to come back and say, ‘I helped create this permanent art installation on this campus.’ So they leave their mark behind here,” she said.
The kids, of course, have their own mission for this work, some of them touchingly personal.
“It’s helping me not think about how I grew up, or how my family was,” explained a 13-year-old. “I volunteered to come out here and do this to just get a lot of stuff off of my mind. If I’m just sitting around, I’m going to be sad, and upset. And I don’t want to be sad.”
For one 15-year-old, creating this art was a bittersweet experience: “It brings up memories of my past. One of my grandmas used to paint all the time. And then she passed away.”
Asked if she might consider the work she was doing a tribute to her grandmother, she reflected, and sat up straight.
“She would have been proud of me.”
Harriet Howard Heithaus covers arts and entertainment for the Naples Daily News/naplesnews.com. Reach her at 239-213-6091.
This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Paul Arsenault, Glades creatures, creative kids transform Youth Haven
[ad_2]
Source link
