or Art reaches out in strange ways

A friend of mine teaches in the lower elemenatary grades in an inner city school.

Since she herself is a painter and an art lover, she tries very hard to inspire her students with an interest in art. This is not easy, since most of her charges have never given any thought to art beyond the gangland grafitti scrawled on walls near their homes (or, even more sadly, sometimes ON their homes).

Anyway, my friend had almost given up on one student, at least regarding the challenge of trying to instill an interest in art in his apathetic mind. His seemed to be the tragic apathy often associated with children who receive no intellectual or artistic stimulation in the home whatsoever.

One day, however, toward the end of what had been a very discouraging session in which the students had been shown

A friend of mine who teaches art to slum children and prison inmates had a lot of success with a book called _Pictoplasma_. See http://www.artezine.com/archive/20020801/ pictoplasma.htm where there is a link to the publisher's website.