Inspirational Art

For Santa Monica artist Joshua Elias, the letter jumped out at him like the flashy hues of yellow and orange he spreads across his canvas.

On the business-sized envelope was a child’s scrawl and a crayon-colored picture, perhaps a self-portrait etched in a third-grader’s hand. Inside was a blank postcard and an invitation to respond with a piece of art of his own.

“It cracked me up,” recalled the 40-year-old painter. “The handwriting reminded me of when I was a kid. I thought it was so sweet, I had to respond.”

The letter was part of a “mail-art” experiment conducted at Mar Vista Elementary School on the Westside. Earlier this year, under the direction of art teacher Lorraine Bubar, students sent out 700 letters--most envelopes painstakingly turned into a child’s work of art--that invited a response.

The colorful postcard renderings of some 300 artists from across Southern California who responded were displayed Friday on school grounds. It turned the small campus into a frenzied meeting place for children released from classes and dozens of artists who showed up to meet their letter-senders.

They weren’t pen pals so much as brush pals.

“I figured that it was sort of an honor to be invited to this,” said artist Steve Gray as he milled about holding the colorful envelope he had received from a student.

“For the kids, it gives them early exposure that they can make a living as an artist, perhaps the inspiration of seeing a real live working artist in the flesh. For me, it’s a good chance to get out of my studio and socialize.”

The art was displayed on huge poster boards held on wooden easels, organized alphabetically by the last names of the senders.

The paintings and photographs were stunning in their originality and scope. There were tiny abstracts and watercolors of flowers and ladybugs, artistic self-portraits and childhood dreamscapes.

One apparently hardened artist passed up on drawing anything to pass on a little career advice. “Jose, please, please, please do not become an artist,” read his postcard. “Love it but never, never try 2 live it.”

Eight-year-old Dennis Conway sent off a drawing of a dinosaur. So what did artist Dennis Carmichael send back? A painting of a young boy standing beneath another dinosaur, along with the inscription: “Dennis Conway making his Tyrannosaurus rex do stupid pet tricks.”

Young Conway stood before the picture and smiled. “I think I’m gonna hang it up,” he said.

Did trading work with a real artist make him want to become one?

“Nah,” he said. “I want to be a businessman when I grow up.”

For Bubar, 46, herself an emerging painter who for five years has taught art at Mar Vista, the “mail-art” project was an attempt to make her student artists take themselves more seriously.

“I saw a need for art projects to center on the students as individuals, rather than having them make something for a holiday that looks exactly like the next kid’s.”

Bubar--who was hired by Mar Vista’s parent booster club to compensate for cuts in public-school art instruction--wanders from classroom to classroom, teaching art to some 700 students.

Having brought in to her classes posters and renderings of historically important painters, she one day realized the plethora of painters and artists living in L.A.

That gave her an idea: send them art and ask for art back. So she compiled a list of 700 artists, consulting local galleries and museums for names and addresses.

The response astounded her.

Within days after the letters were sent in July, the returns began pouring in.

In the past, Bubar said, students were encouraged to pursue art as a career based on their ability to draw realistically. Those with diverse forms of expression got little attention.

But now, with the broad spectrum of expression illustrated in the postcard art, Bubar said her students will be encouraged that their style isn’t strange, but artistic.

In the end, students got to keep the art they received.

Bubar said many artists even agreed to speak to her classes about the creative process.

Artist Joshua Elias said he hung his letter in his studio, where it sat for weeks until he finally decided to respond. “One night I was working on a painting and I looked up at it and said ‘Yeah, I’ve got to respond,’ ” he said.

“The whole thing just reminded me of myself as a kid, when I wrote a letter to President John F. Kennedy, using my crayons to draw a peace sign.”

As swarms of children were released from their classes, they ran to the bulletin boards, looking for their postcards.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” shrieked third-grader Lindsay Hammond when she found hers. “It’s a butterfly. It’s so beautiful. I’m going to hang it next to my own artwork.”

Not everyone was so lucky. Artists stood by in the chaos, calling out names of students to whom they had sent work.

“Justin?” said artist Jan Hoover, scanning the crowd. “Juuussstin! There’s got to be a Justin around here.”

But there were some successful matchups.

Whittier artist Victoria Alexander stood by her rendering of stars and trees and children, making eye-contact with students.

“I saw this girl looking at the work, and I said, ‘Are you Blanca?’ And it was her! I gave her my card and some Day of the Dead figures I had made and told her to write me a letter. She said she wanted to be an artist like me someday. It was so neat.”