Architect Gehry, painter Hockney visit East Palo Alto school

Listen up, all you oldsters who can’t tell Spotify from Slither. Renowned artist David Hockney, 79, has been painting with mobile apps for about eight years and thinks the iPad “has something for everyone.”

On Thursday, he gave iPad pointers and critiqued the still–life works of students at Costaño School and the 49ers Academy in East Palo Alto, and even offered some tips that the seventh- and eighth-graders didn’t already know.

Hockney visited with his pal, architect Frank Gehry — whom some laud as the most important architect of the modern world — to celebrate a national program supporting arts in struggling schools. Turnaround Arts offers teacher training, supplies and grants to help schools use arts to boost achievement and student engagement, targeting schools in the bottom 5 percent in state test scores. In the Bay Area, Meadow Homes Elementary in Concord and Burbank Elementary in Hayward also participate in the arts program.

Each school is named a mentor who commits to visiting at least once a year, and Hockney has partnered with the K-5 Costaño and 6-8 49ers Academy, which share a campus.

Hockney, who seldom leaves his home in the Hollywood Hills, appeared to be having a ball at his first visit to a school in 50 years.

“The kids are great,” he said. “They look energetic. I don’t come into contact with many kids now.”

“Very, very good,” Hockney said as he praised Felise Evaimalo’s drawing of gerbera daisies.

Felise, 13, and other students in Angela Karamian’s art class seemed non-plussed by two artistic stars, and the accompanying media, officials from Turnaround Arts and from Facebook, which funds the program at Costaño-49ers.

Several students said they weren’t familiar with Hockney’s fame as a prolific and inventive painter, printmaker and photographer.

“I’m into just painting, I am not really concentrating on artists,” said eighth-grader Maria Barron, 13. But she did know that adults, like her school librarian, around the school were quite excited by the visit of two art luminaries.

The attention was icing on the cake of what Turnaround Arts already has provided, in materials and an enhanced maker space at the school. The program also has trained teachers in integrating art in daily instruction to strengthen academic learning, Principal Viviana Espinosa said.

“We are getting trained in really awesome ways,” said Jacqueline Moore, who teaches gardening, health and wellness to all students, and art after school to kindergartners.

“Art saves souls.”

Turnaround has made what already was a strong art program even stronger.

Unlike many schools serving low-income kids, Costaño-49ers in the Ravenswood City School District provides every child with art, music and PE.

Hockney, who got involved with Turnaround Arts after Gehry invited him, hopes the students keep drawing.

Unlike his more reclusive friend, Gehry has been involved in inner-city schools for half a century. He’s co-founder of Turnaround Arts: California.

“There are over 100 schools in California whose dropout rate in the fifth grade is significant,” Gehry, 87, said. He hopes that bringing artists into schools can help keep kids engaged and involved in school. Through Turnaround Arts he’s mentoring a school on the Hoopa Indian reservation in Northern California.

Over each three-year partnership with a school, the program provides about $300,000 in grants and in-kind donations, said Jacob Campbell, Turnaround program manager. This is Costaño-49ers’ first year. Officials said they hope programs continue beyond the life of each grant.

Turnaround Arts was a project of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. Its honorary chair has been First Lady Michelle Obama. Will it survive the next administration? Officials are hopeful, Campbell said. The first lady transferred administration to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Written by Sharon Noguchi

Originally published by The Mercury News.