Nelsonville, hometown to TV celebrity Sarah Jessica Parker, is located in one of the poorest counties in Appalachian Ohio where the elementary and middle schools can't afford to provide art education.
But thanks to the efforts of a local non-profit (PaperCircle.org)
"Art levels the playing field," says Barbara Campagnola, director of the program. "Children who can express themselves through art tend to build self-confidence. Most of these 9 to 14-year-old children have never been given the opportunity nor the encouragement to make something beautiful."
For five weeks, all 68 children are cycling through four art studios located around the historic town square. With the help of professional artists, they're learning to create African face jugs, hand-made paper and books, collages and paintings, and personalized skateboards. A month-long art show featuring more than 250 pieces of their artwork opens July 25th.
In addition, they're building props and sets, creating costumes from recycled clothes, and learning to act and sing in an original theater production which they'll perform on the stage of the century-old Stuart's Opera House, July 18th.
The program also hires 11 highschool student-interns to assist in the art studios, to create videos, radio programming, and news releases, and to help prepare lunches from locally-grown food. "Some of these children arrive hungry each morning," says Campagnola, who has just been named the 2008 Distinguished Citizen for the Arts by the Ohio Art Education Association.
In hopes of attracting the presidential candidates to the town square to see how art can change the lives of children, student-interns have created custom-painted skateboards and life-size cardboard-cutouts of Obama and McCain.
Watching the kids rehearse their play and discover their hidden talents by creating their very first works of art, Barbara Campagnola says she's "hopeful that Obama and McCain won't turn their backs on these children."
Meanwhile, in southeast Ohio, 68 kids are waiting...
