This weekend marked the opening of George Rodriguez Art Exhibit Blue Dogs and Cajuns at the Imperial
Calcasieu Museum.
The two-day opening included a special treat on Saturday for younger art fans.
This event, Sidewalk Chalk with George, gave children a chance to meet and draw with the
well-known Louisiana artist.
I'm very honored because I want to be an artist when I grow up and I've taken art classes
and it's very honored to go meet him and to go draw what he's drawn and to look at what
he's drawn.
I like that.
We just finished the Sidewalk Chalk event with George Rodriguez.
We had probably 100, 150 kids and parents and we have wonderful blue dogs all over the
museum's parking lot.
It was a huge success.
George Rodriguez did his own Sidewalk Chalk blue dog which you probably have a picture
of.
It's been a wonderful, wonderful two days with this absolutely renowned artist that
has come in our community and really made an impact.
Well of course we have the problem with arts getting cut sometimes and for the children
to be able to interact with someone who is making a living with his art, there are a
lot of kids out there that in fact the young man that won the George Rodriguez Fellowship
last year is now at McNeese and doing well.
This was the springboard for him, the George Rodriguez Foundation.
Rodriguez formed his foundation in 2009 to provide assistance to school art programs
and to students.
George's art closet provides art supplies to both elementary and high school programs.
His art contest awards more than $35,000 in scholarships to Louisiana students including
the 2010 first place winner, Shawn Hicks of Hackberry.
The American press spoke with Rodriguez regarding his foundation and working with children.
Well it's always exciting you know, I mean first they all know about the blue dog.
I think that's the most exciting thing when you go because I go there, there's two or
three ways we work it.
They all paint a blue dog first and they paint what they want second you know and I paint
a blue dog in front of them and show them that you know even a blue dog can be art and
they can relate to a blue dog and so it gets them into the art world in an easier way.
You can't start out with Mona Lisa's you know you got to show them something that they've
recognized and they got to like and that's how it started with the whole foundation and
getting kids involved because we got so many letters when I started painting blue dog from
teachers all over the country using the blue dog as a subject for an art project and they
would paint their blue dog and write a small essay about what it meant to them.
So that's how the whole thing started by just getting so many requests from art teachers
and around the country and they sent us the artwork you know and so at the foundation
we're going to put up all the lot of this artwork that we've collected over the last
ten years.
And out of the programs, the scholarship, the art contest, the art closet, which one
of those programs that you do is closest to your heart?
Well all of them have different, it's really what's the need of the state you know what
we really need you know art teachers need supplies and the more supplies we can give
them the probably more art teachers they would hire because every school has a different
set of problems.
Not very many schools teach art you know and it's been proven that teaching art in school
keeps the kid longer in school.
I mean this is the goal, this is why the infusion of art in the public schools because they
tend to do better you know if it's in the whole curricula, if it's old twelve years
they tend to stay in school longer because of that and there's a whole movement of that
around the country of keeping art in the schools and so that's important to us.
The idea of a goal is important and the goal is the art contest and you know so each one
has a different meaning for us and I think you always need a person behind it that they
can look up to and to me it's the blue dog that they can look up to you know because
the acceptance of that means that it's successful, I'm successful and it can follow you know
I have a lot of things to say to them you know where to go, what to do, how to do it
and it's I'm an example you know as somebody who succeeded staying in Louisiana, staying
the way you live and that's so I want to give it back you know by telling it you got to
say it, you got to keep I'm a success and here's why, I went away to art school, had
to go to California to go to art school and come back but I stayed and I painted in Louisiana
and so anything is possible.
