Whitney Blake's vision of peace is simple. It's a world of quiet, flowers, friendship and love. And throughout March, Bloomington residents and IU students will see Blake's work on a billboard at the corner of Fourth Street and College Avenue. Along with three other local middle-schoolers, 12-year-old Blake won a Youth Art Month student art contest sponsored by Your Art Here.\nBlake's answer to the artistic question "What would you like to tell your community?" invites the community dialogue about peace in her work, titled "What Would It Be Like?"\n"I thought about the different visions that came into my mind when I thought about peace," Blake said. "I don't like war, don't like the war in Iraq. We need more peace." \nWhen she learned of the contest in late January, Blake was working on a peace museum at the Harmony School. She slept and dreamt peace, her mother Stephanie Blake said. For Whitney Blake, the choice to do a piece about peace wasn't hard.\nSponsored by the Council for Art Education, Inc., March has been designated as National Youth Art Month. It is a nationwide celebration of young people and the art they produce. Bloomington has celebrated Youth Art Month with an exhibit of student work for the past 30 years.\nAnd Your Art Here wanted to contribute to the celebration. Throughout January and February, YAH campaigned for submissions to its two-city contest -- students in grades one to six and seven to 12 from both Indianapolis and Bloomington schools participated. \nWith its pastel tones, creative imagery and fantastic undertones, Whitney Blake's piece fits the criteria set up by Your Art Here. The work must render well to a large size -- each billboard is about 11-by-22 feet, said Shana Berger, who founded YAH along with Nathan Purath, Owen Mundy and Alyssa Hill in August 2002.\n"We wanted to make sure we have a variety of topics displayed on billboards," Mundy said. "Our criteria were about 50 percent visual and 50 percent content-based."\nAt its heart, YAH has the realization that not enough art finds itself into daily life. \nBy reclaiming billboards -- the spaces usually used for advertising purposes -- the founders of YAH hope to provide access to public places for artists where anyone can express their ideas or where anyone can "be the media," the motto they've adopted. Originally uttered by Jello Biafra, the former lead singer of the Dead Kennedys, this catch phrase emphasizes the four founders' desire to connect Bloomington residents with each other through art. Biafra originally coined the phrase to stir his fans to action and used it as inspiration for his triple-CD spoken word record, "Become the Media," released in 2000. In Biafra's understanding, the average American has been in the spectator's seat for far too long. He invites people to participate in the free exchange of information through any and all art forms available.\nAnd all four pieces that won the month-long competition answered Biafra's call with a passion, inspired by the artists' surroundings.
CREATIVE OUTLET\nWhen Ann Zerfas considered what she would submit to the contest, she focused on two topics: volunteering and working together. The 10-year-old Binford Elementary fifth-grader settled on encouraging the Bloomington community to volunteer.\n"A community is a place where people live," Zerfas said. "We should respect and take care of it."\nAnd by volunteering for various projects around their community, residents ultimately make it better for themselves, Zerfas said. \nTwo of Zerfas' classmates also submitted projects to the contest. None of the three expected to win, but they ended up standing on the awards stage -- along with Harmony School's Whitney Blake -- at the Youth Art Month celebration March 6. \nEleven-year-old Lacie Im's piece highlights the importance of sharing. Though most people are taught about sharing early in their lives, they sometimes forget about it by the time they are adults, she said.\n"I was visiting another city with my parents, and there was this black man in a wheelchair," Im said. "My dad gave me $2 to give to him. He showed me that it's important to give to people if you can."\nAnd just like her friends' pieces, 11-year-old Emily Cooper's piece speaks to the entire community. The billboard, titled "Nature Is Special So Don't Harm It," encourages community members to look at the way they treat all aspects of nature around them -- whether it's cutting down trees, littering or simply trashing items that could be recycled. \n"I'm using this piece to express my feelings," Cooper said. "Art isn't just here to look at."\nStanding in front of 200 people at the Youth Art Month award ceremony, none of the four artists were fazed by their sudden fame. They agreed the contest gave them an opportunity to raise issues important not only to them as Bloomington residents, but also as citizens of the world and as humans.\nFor Whitney Blake, the contest was also a way for the adult community to hear voices different from their own -- the voices of children. For her, "art can make a difference."
A BILLBOARD GALLERY\nThe Your Art Here founders have taken up this philosophy to entice a kind of Bloomington -- and more recently, Indianapolis -- cultural revolution. They have set out to recolonize the traditionally commercial spaces. \n"Our mission is to give a more leveled playing field," Purath said. "We believe that everyone has the right to be the media."\nThis idea isn't new. In 1999, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City placed a variety of art on billboards throughout the city. And the Monroe County Community School Corporation has rented a billboard in the past to showcase student art. But the founders of Your Art Here have taken this idea a step further. At its heart, Your Art Here is a forum for social commentary, strong visuals and virtually anything that can inspire conversations within the community.\nYour Art Here was also born out of the "frustration of being an artist" -- all four are recent IU graduates in photography. Without adequate gallery space to showcase large-scale projects, the Bloomington art community lacked a valuable resource, Mundy said, and because billboards provide such a high level of visibility, they are a natural choice for a wordless dialogue in society.\nThrough this competition, Hill said YAH wanted to "instill in the students the desire, knowledge and confidence that will allow them to engage their community and world throughout their lives."\n-- Contact IDS managing editor Jane Charney at echarney@indiana.edu.
