Trappings: Kids are future of Museum of the Big Bend

Rachel Maxwell works with kids at the museum on a Tuesday afternoon; every kid’s face tells a story. Avalanche photo

Today, we present a question-and-answer session with Louisa Mayfield, the director of the museum’s burgeoning program for Big Bend kids. Francell, by the way, has repeatedly emphasized that the museum’s educational work with youngsters is the most important thing happening in his world.

Question: What are you working on right now?

Louisa Mayfield: We’re doing our classes during the week, during the afternoon for different age groups. Then, we have monthly programs on Saturdays. For instance, we added the Trappings Children’s Art Show this month because we thought it important to get them involved. It’s good for the kids to do things that coincide with Trappings because the event is such a neat thing for everyone out here. It’s good to have children’s things that coincide with the major functions of the museum.

Kids entered our children’s art show from all surrounding counties and beyond: Marfa to Alpine to Van Horn to Terlingua to Fort Davis.

Q: Tell us a bit about your background.

LM: I graduated from SMU with a degree in foreign language - Spanish and French. Then I got my teacher’s certificate and started teaching in San Antonio. After that, Jack - my husband - and I moved to Rockport, where I taught for three years. Then, when Jack came out here to work at TransPecos [Bank], I taught for a year at the Christian School. After a while, I heard that Larry was looking over here for someone to lead the children’s program. That’s right up my alley. I did some similar things in San Antonio. When they got ready to hire, I pushed and pushed and pushed. And a year ago, I was hired.

Q: How do you start a children’s program?

LM: You just plunge right in. Sure, with anything new, you make mistakes on the way. There are things I’d change, there are things I wouldn’t change. I just jumped right in with things I’d done in the past. I found out that each place is different - things that work here might not work elsewhere. What worked in Rockport might not work here.

Last summer we started week-long programs, Monday through Friday. And we did four or five Saturdays, which seemed to take a gargantuan amount of time. But I was real lucky to get good teachers.

We just jumped in, 9 to 1 each day, the kids ate lunch here, we did projects, even had a physical education time that a young football player from Sul Ross supervised.

Q: What did you teach?

LM: Different arts and crafts projects. They’d come in at 9 and they’d have a drawing pad and do free draw until everyone got there. Then we’d start our first project. We did everything. We did footprints, handprints, we made plaster of Paris decorated with shells and sand. We did clay and watercolor and pen and ink.

Then we’d take a break about 10:30 and go outside for about 30 minutes and then come back in for more projects.

Saturdays during the year are very popular. But in the summer, parents want things for their kids during the week, not the weekend. So this summer we’re going to do four weeks in June and four weeks in July — weeklong programs straight through rather than spread out on Saturdays.

August is when most people are gone, it’s the month that families can all get together, so we don’t do anything at that time.

Q: What about the school year?

LM: We start our after-school programs in September, and our monthly Saturday programs. Last semester I learned that 4- and 5-year-olds are a whole different thing unto themselves. You teach them very differently than the older groups.

I’m also trying to hire more from our campus - teachers in training, artists in training - to work with the kids. It works well; it gives the Sul Ross students hands-on training and it gives our kids their expertise. Working with our kids gives the Sul Ross students extraordinary insights into the real world.

Q: So there’s a natural partnership waiting to happen with Sul Ross undergraduate programs?

LM: Absolutely, and that is my goal. It’s tougher during the summer because the teaching students usually leave town. And the master’s degree candidates simply don’t have the time. I really want to have a super-charged intern program with the education department, and the art department. For instance, Carol Fairlie over in the art department has been a great help.

Q: Who’s doing the teaching?

LM: Right now I have three teachers that work with the kids on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and also on Saturdays. Right now, I have an undergrad art student. And then there’s a vet tech who’s getting her master’s in biology; that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with museums and art, but she loves kids, can work well with kids and might go on to teach. On Wednesdays I have one who comes in from the public school system. And we all mix and match on Saturdays.

We stick to about one major Saturday event a month. That’s about all that people can handle, families get busy. In May, we have our Saturday overnight. The kids come about 7 p.m. and we hit the planetarium, do a couple of art projects, watch a movie on the big screen in the classroom, a flashlight tour of the museum.

We have a place for them to sleep but they get so wound up, it’s sometimes hard for them. About 4 a.m., I had to tell one of the fourth-graders: “Go to sleep!” It was good; we had a great time.

Q: What’s the cost?

LM: The cost to the kids is $10 for a Saturday. You have to have a value on things out here. The idea is not for us to make money, we’re not trying to make money, it’s to have a value. If it’s free, people out here don’t show up. For the weekend classes they get 12 weeks of classes for $50, so that’s less than $10 a class.

For the summer, we charge $25 a week, or $5 a day. And we have scholarships available.

Q: Any problems getting kids involved?

LM: We’ve had no problems recruiting kids. The teachers have been a great help with that. Recruiting more Sul Ross students is the next major goal. And, to me, that’s simply a matter of getting the word out - we offer good jobs, working with kids, making reasonable money, which should be very attractive to students.

Q: What do you want a kid to get out of this?

LM: Well, I want them to learn that there’s a lot more out there than simple arts and crafts. We want them to dig deeper into art. For instance, we do a lot of work in real clay, which is then fired by the art department. And these kids are starting to study a medium and/or an artist. We’ve done Picasso, Matisse. And now, they’re even doing some 3-D stuff. And that’s where it helps to get a real artist in here. And some of these kids are super talents, undiscovered creative talents. It’s great for their attention, hand-eye coordination, color appreciation, open up that creative vein.

And the older kids, the 10 through 12- year-olds, become very serious about this. A lot of their stuff is highly framable. We can help them build on what they get in school. And, remember, we’re lucky in our school district because our kids are still getting art instruction.

Q; Where do you want the program to go from here?

LM: Within the next three years, I would like to see more than children involved in the education program. I would like to be able to offer educational classes to adults, to older kids from high school. They may not be as regular as the youngsters are because they have so much more going on in their lives. But I’d like to do things like day-long symposiums where they can really dig deep into the subject matter. And it doesn’t just have to be art. It can be science, history, whatever.

Q: Anything special coming up?

LM: We’re going to be doing the congressional art competition. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez has three competitions - one for San Antonio, one for Eagle Pass and one for little ole Alpine. This will take place in April. It’s a judged contest here in Alpine. The winner of this contest goes to San Antonio to compete against other winners from the other two cities. And the winners of that competition will have their work hanging in the Capitol building in Washington, D.C.

I would love to see a kid from Marfa, Alpine, Fort Davis or Marathon have his or her art displayed there. And the winner gets a trip to Washington to be honored.

I want programs like that looking at us to coordinate activities. I have the space, the technology, the expertise to do it.

For instance, we brought gifted-and-talented kids from all over the area to Sul Ross for a full-day learning experience on how to use a university. It’s great to get these junior high kids on campus to see where they can go, where they can learn.