A local charitable foundation is helping youngsters at two Salt Lake elementary schools get a hands-on experience with fine arts and learn to enjoy school at the same time.

Earlier this month students in the fifth and sixth grades at Whittier Elementary, 1600 S. 300 East, saw pictures of tanks at the Fort Douglas Military Museum taken by their art teacher, Kay Night Jones, and drew their own renderings of them in colored pencils. The pictures are on display at the museum through next week.

Jones, the art director at Whittier, said the four classes of fifth- and sixth-graders at Whittier have been studying World War II, and she found the museum's colorful Sherman, Patton tanks and an 8-inch self-propelled howitzer a natural for the kids to draw.

Her position is half paid for by the Youth Enrichment Foundation and the school. The Youth Enrichment Foundation was formed about 11 years ago by Bart Warner, owner of Freightliner of Utah, and his family to help arts programs in elementary schools, especially Title I schools for low-income students. The foundation also provides funding for an art teacher at Hawthorne Elementary.

The students go to art classes in a room assigned to Jones, who teaches them to do contour drawings first, then perspective and finally 3-D drawings. "Art is learning to stick with it," said the former sign painter. "If you love it enough and you stick with it, you can do it."

She was surprised the girls liked drawing the tanks as much as the boys. "Basically, artists are interested in shapes, regardless of the subject," she said.

"I've done arts advocacy for many years. One of things we found when we brought arts into Whittier is that kids enjoyed being in school more, attendance increased and the kids focused more on school. The students, while learning art, are also learning about anthropology and history," Jones said.

"The Youth Enrichment Foundation also sponsors a keyboard music program at the schools. We just hung 1,200 pieces of student work in the Whittier auditorium, and last Thursday evening parents came to see it. It was a great evening."

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E-mail: lweist@desnews.com