Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 28, 1991 TAG: 9103280280
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jeff DeBell/ Staff Writer
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It was a joke, of course. But Ed Dolinger and Mimi Babe Harris relished the moment. They head the Center Scholars program, which aims to foster high school students' interest in the arts and the lives of working artists.
With West, it was obvious that the teachers had scored. Another student said she wished her mom was more like the artist.
West does make for a dramatic contrast with classroom-style art instruction. She doesn't merely make art. She is surrounded by it. It's in her studio. It's in her yard and garden. It's in the trees and in her house - on the walls and furniture and in the windows and bathroom and even on the blades of the ceiling fan.
In fact, her house is a work of art, built by the artist and her friends and family from salvaged lumber and indigenous materials including stones hauled painstakingly from the river.
It's the same with West's distinctive sculpture, in which she puts natural materials and found objects to highly original new uses.
"Leave your brain open," she told the students. "Keep your mind open to other alternatives."
"I think they're overwhelmed," Harris said of the students, who were uncharacteristically subdued at West's. But on the drive back to Roanoke, many of the high schoolers agreed that the visit had been a highlight of their time as Center Scholars.
The program dates back to 1984. It was begun by Center in the Square, Roanoke's downtown cultural center, and continues to be based there. The administrative end of the program is handled by the Arts Council of the Blue Ridge (formerly the Arts Council of Roanoke Valley), one of Center's resident organizations.
Students for each year's program are selected from applicants among the juniors and seniors of all Roanoke Valley high schools. The term lasts eight weeks and requires the students' attendance for a few hours on Saturdays and an occasional weeknight. Tuition, paid by the student's school system, is $150 - money that constitutes the program's entire budget.
There are 18 in the current class of Center Scholars, which began meeting on Jan. 31.
"I love it," said Cave Spring High School senior Michelle Morris. "I get exposed to stuff I can't get at school because there's no time for electives."
Dameon Lester, a Salem High School senior who plans to study art at Virginia Commonwealth University, is a second-time Center Scholar who has no regrets about giving up his Saturday-morning sleep for the program.
"It gets me involved in something I normally wouldn't do," he said. "It gives me new ideas and it's made me appreciate all the arts more."
This is the first year for Harris and Dolinger as the program's leaders. They succeeded Magnet School drama teacher Faye Haggerty, who headed the program from its beginning through last year.
Harris is artist in residence for Roanoke City Schools and Dolinger is her counterpart with Roanoke County Schools. Both are sculptors.
"We opened it up and tried to reach everybody," Harris said. "For juniors and seniors, this is like our last shot at them."
"It's an alternative experience that isn't as structured as the schools," Dolinger said of the Center Scholars program. "They get the experience of socially and artistically interacting with different kinds of kids."
Arts council director Susan Cole said the program had become overly performance-oriented - both in content and in the type of student it was attracting. She felt the program needed more kinds of students and "a multi-disciplinary smattering of the arts.
"Mimi and Ed are pretty open-minded that way,"Cole said. "We set the tone by the teachers we hire."
The tone set by Harris and Dolinger has been diversity. The scholars attended a play at Mill Mountain Theater's Theatre B and later worked with Mary Best-Bova, resident director at Mill Mountain. They wrote children's stories under the guidance of writer Nancy Patterson. And there has been music, lots of music. The group attended a chamber music performance by the avant-garde Kronos Quartet, visited Threshold Recording to hear from singer/musician Curley Ennis and engineer Harold Thompson on the subject of making recordings and surviving in the music business, and met with African-American musicians Leroy Lowe and Hadassah Stowe.
"Stop thought," Stowe told the scholars. "Become one with yourself and your spirit."
After hearing Lowe & Stowe perform, the high scholars tried their own hand at the chants and songs and the performers' exotic instruments.
"You could just lose yourself in the music," said Lisa Thi Beskar, a Patrick Henry High School junior. "It was like another Lisa Thi coming down."
Excursions have included a tour of exhibitions at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art at Winston-Salem, N.C. and the trip to West's place near Pembroke.
Besides the play-going experience the scholars got two hours of actor-training exercises under Bova's direction.
"You can be any age and any sex and in any country of the world and be an actor," Bova told the scholars. "You don't need a paint brush. You don't need clay. You just need yourself and your life experience. Tonight you may discover not only something about theater but something about yourself."
The exercises were followed by improvised dramatic vignettes by the students.
"They're so willing to try something," Bova said after the session. "That's why they participate in this program."
The enthusiasm was demonstrated again a few days later, when the scholars underwent a two-hour crash course in ballet and jazz movement, then gamely created a series of short ballets of their own. Their instructor on that occasion was Julie White, a dancer and teacher in the Roanoke City's Magnet School for the Arts.
West came to Roanoke to work with the scholars on a collaborative sculpture that was installed Monday in the arts council's window at 20 E. Church Ave. It will remain on public display there for at least six weeks.
It was the final project for this class of Center Scholars.
"I wish it would go on longer," Salem High School senior Danny Kiser said. "I love experiencing different kinds of art. It's terrific."
by CNB