MAKING ART FOR EVERYONE

Cleda Curtis showed a student how to blend shadows in an oil painting.

This portrait of her niece Stacey Curtis was painted by Cleda Curtis.

There are many arts programs for children and students in the Cape Girardeau area, and the Senior Learning Program at Southeast offers art classes for senior citizens. But adults mostly have been left out of the mix.

Greg Jones, executive director of the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri, wants to create more opportunities for adults to learn art. The problem is the Arts Council has to use facilities at Southeast Missouri State University to teach the adult art classes, and they are only available in the summer. A ceramics class for adults is planned for July.

While the Arts Council is grateful for the use of the university facilities, the organization wants to hold classes year round. He hopes the Arts Council can secure a facility in the community where art classes for all age groups can be held year-round.

Enrollment and other information can be obtained by calling Jones at 334-9233.

Another opportunity for adults to learn the arts sputtered last fall for lack of enrollment, but Katherine Ellinger Smith, director of the Art Academy of Southeast Missouri State University, is determined to offer more art classes for adults this fall.

One will be a design class that will show students how to use art in a practical sense.

Another class will explore creativity and making art with adults through working with clay, fabric, journals, theater games and other means.

A third class, for anyone 15 and older, will use mask making as a tool that will lead the class members on a creative exploration of their own psychological masks.

The last two classes will be taught by Khorsian Blanc-Ridings.

Smith, an adjunct professor of art at the university, said the art academy wants to establish a core group of classes for the fall and spring. Eventually, she hopes to work with the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri in offering more classes for adults.

Since the Art Academy's class is new, other suggestions are sought from the community. Smith asks that anyone who has suggestions for future classes contact the Art Academy at 651-2662.

Cleda Curtis of Oran believes in adults learning the arts. She didn't get involved with art until she was 25.

Today she teaches a weekly painting class in Oran for adults from as far away as Memphis, Tenn., and St. Louis, as well as teaching art seminars in many different parts of the country.

Her class in Oran includes students from Paducah, Ky., Blytheville, Ark., Portageville, Poplar Bluff, St. Louis, Farmington, Memphis, Tenn., and a few from Cape Girardeau, Jackson and Scott City.

"I would teach more here and travel less if I had more students from the local area," she said.

Curtis, who wrote the book "Portrait Painting Simplified," teaches one six-hour class on Thursday at her studio, the Cleda Curtis Art School, year-round. The class is limited to 10 students.

"Anyone with the desire to paint that has the dedication can come here and learn to paint and learn to paint well," Curtis said.

She teaches all types of painting, from portraits to landscapes in oils and watercolors.

She works with her students individually. They are encouraged to take photographs of things they would like to paint and she teaches them the rules of painting.

"They are the same rules used by the old Masters," Curtis said.

"I teach color theory. You learn the rules and the things that make paintings work," she added.

Her students have had success. Holly Dirnberger of Oran has won many awards in state and national competitions.

Several of her students from an adult workshop she teaches in Paducah, Ky., recently won awards at the Paducah Women's Club Art Show.

She doesn't teach methods because she says people who learn from method teachers can't go out and produce other art works on their own.

At age 25, Curtis decided to go to college to learn to paint portraits. But she didn't find any art classes that taught portrait painting. She spent another year in graduate school and still never had a class in the one area of art she really wanted to learn.

"I had so much trouble trying to find classes to learn to paint realistically," she said.

Now she knows of many workshops that teach realistic painting, but the fact that they didn't exist when she wanted to learn sparked her to open her own studio in Oran. It's also the reason she travels around teaching.

Curtis said she has met many adults who have always wanted to paint but never had the time. Another obstacle is that they want immediate results or believe art is a natural talent and a class can't help.

"There's really a misconception about talent. The talent is really the desire to do it," Curtis said.

Another obstacle sometimes cited is expense. But after the original materials are bought, the cost of maintaining painting supplies is cheaper than for most hobbies, she said.

For more information about Curtis's school in Oran, call (573) 262-2374.