Art reaches out to us each day in a myriad of ways

Making art is the universal method for expressing how we feel. Although the professional artist is aiming to evoke some specific feeling from you, for most if us our expressions through art are part of our everyday living – it shows how we feel about the things around us.

My friend and longtime artisan of fine woodcraft, Ed Reid, as his health slipped downward, turned to poetry. Observing how he felt about the “things around him” – nature, God, family and friends, he wrote his poetry and published it. (“Fires Creek Calling. Check your local Murphy bookstore and you’ll find it.)

Award-winning photographer Kelly Kennon, who has held a camera in her hand almost constantly since high school, admits that her first love is hiking in nature. However, making the effort to photograph the land and the wildlife does more for her than just viewing it. Kelly felt it important to capture the moments that delighted her, and to be able to revisit those moments and the feelings they produce.

On Thursday morning, I was gifted with some rather wonderful expressions of visual and performing art by students at Peachtree Elementary School. It was a morning of honoring veterans, and I had been personally invited by two of those students.

In the school’s library and media room 50 or so veterans, from various branches of military service, enjoyed a delicious breakfast, followed by narrators, singers and handmade cards, all to thank and honor the veterans present – men and women from the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force. The youngest veteran was perhaps 30 years old. The oldest was a 98-year-old sailor who, like my own Navy father, had served in the Pacific during both World War II and the Korean War.     

Each grade level of students came in separately to sing, and waited patiently while the older students gave their thank you speeches. When the narrations were done each class then sang an inspirational or patriotic song followed by one chosen particularly to honor one of the branches of service. “From the Halls of Montezuma,” “Anchors Aweigh,” “Wild Blue Yonder,” “Caissons Go Rolling Along” and “Semper Paratus” for the U.S. Coast Guard.

These children and their teachers had obviously worked hard to present the veterans with a special treat for the morning. When someone sings to you, it would be pretty impossible to be unmoved, for song unlocks that part of our brain that seeks connection to joy. Oh, but then, when children sing for you, to recognize who you are and to say thank you for the service you gave – well, that makes a special morning indeed.

Sometimes we think art has to be hanging in a gallery or performed on a glittering stage, but art reaches out us each day, like Ed’s poems and Kelly’s photos and the songs of children, working to switch on our sense of wonder at the everyday elements of lives.

David Vowell is director of Visual & Literary Arts with the Cherokee County Arts Council. For details on the council, visit www.cherokeeartscouncil.org.