THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 15, 1995 TAG: 9501130223
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Random Rambles
SOURCE: Tony Stein
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
There's a very pleasant senior citizens' art show at the Central Library in Great Bridge, and that says something good about Chesapeake.
Partly because this first Senior Citizens' Art Exhibition tells me a lot of people have talent and enthusiasm that thumbs its nose at the calendar. Partly because the Central Library is a handsome building just a couple of years old symbolizing this city's growing commitment to culture and the fine arts.
That commitment wasn't always there. When I first moved here in 1971, I used to claim that the Three B's in Chesapeake meant beans, barns and barbecue, not Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. ``Culture'' in Chesapeake was mostly the two syllables on the end of ``agri.'' Things have changed, and L. (for Lenore) Randy Harrison wants to keep those changes rolling full speed ahead.
Harrison is the city's arts coordinator, under the umbrella of the Parks and Recreation Department. She's a Brooklyn native with an impressive resume of public relations jobs and a dedication to making the rest of us more aware of the value of the arts in our lives.
She doesn't just talk about the arts. She does them. Like when she took accordion lessons for seven years during her childhood. ``If you were Jewish or Italian in Brooklyn, you played the accordion,'' Harrison said. Her mom was Italian, so the accordion it was. Incidentally, Harrison said one of her childhood friends used to complain about another girl who walked around incessantly singing and forecasting stardom for herself. The noisy kid's name was Barbra Streisand.
Harrison's artistic outlet as an adult has been painting and drawing, and two of her works decorate her office wall. Her usual style is what you might call ``soft realism,'' gentled around the edges like a pleasant memory. She also does representational nudes and remembers when prissy art show judges censored her work with strategically placed paper squares.
She came to Hampton Roads in 1972 from Germany, where her husband - ex-husband now - had been in the Army. On April Fool's Day last year, also her son's birthday, she signed on with the city as arts coordinator. Basically, she's the operational arm of the Chesapeake Fine Arts Commission. That covers everything from writing a budget to chasing fund grants to making a speech and whatever in-between helps artistic expression flourish.
Her No. 1 down-the-road goal is turning the commission's long-standing dream into reality. The dream is a fine arts facility for the city. The reality is the appoximately four million bucks she figures the facility would cost. But she's glowing happily right now over the fact that Tidewater Community College says it will provide a site for the building.
``It makes sense,'' Harrison said. ``Why build just another theater when there are already theaters in the area? This would be an art gallery, a corporate training facility, a place for the city's cable access station.'' And more, said Harrison. She comes down hard on her belief that ``arts'' doesn't mean some hoity-toity, nose-in-the-air turf limited to a snobby few. Like in music, for example, where ``arts'' stretches from Handel to hot jazz, from classical to country.
Harrison sees funding for the project as a joint effort: city, state, federal, private and corporate. ``Chesapeake has come of age,'' she said. ``It's taking its place among the cities of the region.''
But always there have been other voices that question spending money on the arts when there are so many other needs. ``Frills'' is the usual description of arts when the budget axes are sharpened. Ask Harrison for a response and she said arts money is an investment with a real pay-off.
``If more children had the ability to express themselves in the arts, we'd be spending less money on rehabilitation,'' she said. ``And think about people who want to become scientists and engineers. The arts stimulate their curiosity and their creativity. They look for a variety of solutions to a problem.''
If you want to talk bottom line dollars and cents, Harrison points to the fact that Norfolk Southern Corp. has said one of the reasons it located in Norfolk was the quality of life arts programs helped provide.
And if you want to talk about the arts as a soother of the soul and a bridge between people, Harrison has been there, too. It happened when she was in Spain.
She was out one day drawing a picture. Gradually, a group of youngsters clustered around her. ``I didn't speak any Spanish, and they didn't speak any English,'' she remembers. ``There was no verbal communication between us, but we were all communicating because someone was drawing a picture.
``The arts are universal.'' MEMO: MORE ON THE SENIOR CITIZENS' ART EXHIBITION/ PAGE 12
by CNB