Where do you find 3rd- and 4th-graders snapping their fingers to jazz beats to “bring the day to order”?
As soon as you enter the room, you know this is not an ordinary class.
The students at Southwest Atlanta Christian Academy are painting panels for a large mural of the Atlanta skyline as they listen to Miles Davis’ “Green Dolphin Street.”
"It calms them down," said instructor Frank Morrison. "Well, it calms me down. "
Morrison, a New Jersey-raised graffiti artist and former dancer behind hip-hop singer Sybil and rappers the Sugar Hill Gang , joined the staff last fall after learning the private school’s art program was on hiatus because the previous instructor was injured in a car crash.
“I couldn’t imagine not having art in school,” said Morrison, 41, who has two children at the school. “Art opens us so many opportunities to think outside the box.”
Morrison’s face or name may not be familiar to many of his students and their parents, but his work is.
He has illustrated more than 20 children’s books as well as CD covers, and his work is displayed in calendars. Perhaps his most well-known projects are the illustrations for Queen Latifah’s “Queen of the Scene” and Alex Rodriguez’s “Out of the Ballpark” children’s books. He’s also done commissioned work for comedian Bill Cosby, and his work has been seen on the sets of New York Undercover” and “The Cosby Show.”
He’s known for his elongated figures in his art.
Sometimes he fuses music with a short history lesson about jazz and some well-known artists such as Romare Bearden or Jackson Pollock, whom he said used techniques that were like “dancing around the canvas.
“I was always influenced by the modern art movement - and jazz was there,” he said. “Art and jazz have, literally, been parallel throughout the years.”
Does he think the students make the connection?
“No,” he said, laughing. “Some of them do and some of them don’t,” but, “just as long as they are introduced. You don’t know who gets it right now, but as long as you plant that seed.”
At a time when budgets cuts have forced some schools to scale back their arts programs, Southwest, which has an enrollment of 200 students from preschool to 12th grade, is exploring expanding its program. Patrice Francis, who is head of the school on Campbellton Road, said the class has become so popular that the school is considering offering arts after school and possibly opening it up to the broader community.
Francis said many times she has to shoo kids out of Morrison’s class at the end of the day because they don’t want to leave. “Many school systems around the country are putting art on the cutting board. Art and music are the first to go or parents are required to pay for supplies.”
“Art is essential to all children,” said Eric Cooper, president of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education in New York, a nonprofit that works with districts to improve learning and teaching and has a specific program that addresses the arts. “IQ may be going up 10 percent a generation but creativity has been going down. That may be because because art has been considered an add-on enrichment.”
Urban and rural arts programs are at particular risk.
“Art in wealthier suburban communities are one of the last things to be dropped, but in urban and rural schools where people are struggling in poverty, guess what goes?”
Demetria Haddocks, whose two 11-year-old sons are in Morrison’s class, works in education. “I know the arts can tap into a lot of hidden talents that kids have,” she said. “Regular as well as special-needs. They come home and they’re excited and share more about what they learned in art than in any other class. It’s shocking.”
Sixth-grader E’va-Artemeza Symonds has always been artistically inclined “but it wasn’t until she actually got instruction from Brother Morrison that her skills and talents began to develop very quickly,” said her mother, Toya Symonds. She said her daughter is at the age when emotions can run high, but she’s found peace of mind with the class.
The class has been inspiring in other ways as well. “If I mess up, he always tells me I can fix it and it comes out terrific,” E’va-Artemeza said.
Back in school when other students were focused on sports, Morrison hung out with students who were interested in drawing and painting. He and like-minded classmates formed sketch clubs and drawing clubs. They learned about perspectives and color blending.
“A lot of children I see today don’t have options,” he said.
Morrison developed an interest in art as a youngster but really found his “zone” in art while touring with Sybil in Paris. An art teacher, Francis Moore, assigned him a homework assignment to visit the Louvre Museum. He was hooked, especially when he saw the Mona Lisa for the first time.
When he returned stateside he hit the galleries, eventually making contacts that would send him on his way, eventually doing gallery work and selling work all over the United States.
He wants to see other young African-Americans follow in his footsteps - as artists or perhaps to work in a museum, book publishing, fashion or in illustration.
Art is the doorway, and he wants to see his students walk through “to appreciate life and its surroundings.”
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