A simple way to support the arts in our kids' schools

Posted by Guest Blogger at 11:55 AM on May 10, 2007.

This guest post was written by Liz Langley.

When you're out and about on Friday, May 11, if you see an inordinate ... even alarming ... number of large mushrooms on lawns or in parks in your neighborhood, don't panic. It's not some weird global symptom. It could be art.

Doug Rhodehamel, a 38 year-old Orlando artist, has been making these ornamental mushrooms out of paper bags -- ordinary brown paper lunch bags -- for many years, but on Friday he'll be putting them to new use. While normally he might decorate a lawn or park with a few dozen or a hundred (he's "mushroomed" people's yards guerrilla style, done installations at the Orlando Museum of Art and even provided pure white fungi for a wedding), he'll be installing 10,000 mushrooms at Orlando's Loch Haven Park to kick off his Spore Project, an effort to raise awareness of the need for art in schools. Mushrooms will be popping up in cities from Brooklyn to Austin, from Maui to Miami as supporters of The Spore Project plant their art.

"You learn so much in art that helps you through life," Doug says of the classes that lit up his school days. "It's not just drawing trees and fruit. It shows you that there are options ... that

"It gave me a lot of confidence, gave me something to look forward to and a reason to be proud of myself."

And when he says of the Spore Project, "It's for the kids," it's kind of hard not to think of Tim Robbins in "The Hudsucker Proxy," talking about his new invention, the hula hoop: "You know ... for kids!" Not only does Rhodehamel resemble the actor, but he has a great deal of that character's refreshing simplicity.

Doug started making the paper bag mushrooms in school, just twisting his brown bag into a mushroom shape and giving it to a friend. Twenty years later, as a professional artist (with a degree in Industrial Design from Ohio State), his mushroom installations caught the attention of teachers, who kept asking Doug to come and demonstrate his technique for their classes because the idea was so simple, affordable and fun. "Talking to teachers about their budgets, or lack of budgets," Rhodehamel says, was part of his inspiration.

The National Assembly of State Art Agencies says arts appropriations increased in 2006-2007, which is fab; but when Rhodehamel talks about teachers having to pay out of pocket to buy class supplies ... well, a little more awareness of how kids need art couldn't hurt.

Doug's Web site has a step-by-step guide to making the mushrooms and if you miss out on today's Spore Project, don't worry: other mushroom happenings will go on throughout the year.

"I think this project shows people a side of themselves they didn't know they had or maybe just forgot about," Rhodehamel says. "Everyone has a little creativity in them somewhere."

So check out the Web site, take a minute to reinvigorate yourself by making art and plant a mushroom.

You know ... for kids.

Tagged as: art, schools, spore, doug rhodehamel