One Columbus teen's artwork is getting national recognition.
Mason Hardin, a 15-year-old special needs student at St. Luke's School, was one of 102 students between the ages of 5 and 15 from across the nation chosen to have personal artwork displayed at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library as part of the 2012 All Kids can CREATE exhibition. The contest was sponsored by VSA, the international organization on arts and disability and an affiliate of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
The theme of this year's exhibit is "What Inspires Me." Mason drew a self-portrait with her parents, writing "I will work hard like my parents do at their jobs. I will be a hard working student."
Mason was also one of 10 students selected to travel to Washington in August for the opening of the exhibit.
"She was thrilled," said Mason's mother, Becca Hardin. "She told all her friends she was going to Washington."
Mason has Mosiac Down Syndrome, a chromosomal condition associated with a delay in cognitive ability and physical growth. Hardin said, but they've made a point to keep her in inclusive classrooms, where she interacts with students of all abilities.
"Children with disabilities can learn and thrive and flourish like any other child," Hardin said. She said in addition to art, Mason also likes to swim, play with their dogs and is active in church.
To create the portrait, Mason copied a photograph of her parents and herself in pen and watercolor. Mason's art teacher, Sietske Johnson, submitted work from all her students to the contest. To have Mason's work selected out of 3,000 students is "fantastic," she said.
"It's pretty impressive," Johnson said. "She's a great artist and very dedicated once she gets inspired."
Art class is more free form than a regular classroom, Johnson said, and Mason will walk around during class and complement other students.
"She walks around and looks at other students work and says good job," she said. "She's swinging and singing and dancing. It's a very different atmosphere than a regular classroom."
Hardin, who will travel with her daughter to the opening of the exhibit in D.C., said Mason was excited about the trip.
"It's very special. The good news just kept coming," she said.
The annual "What Inspires Me" contest is part of VSA and CVS Caremark's All Kids Can CREATE campaign, which encourages learning and community engagement through the arts.
The program includes the Call for Art, artist-in-residence programs in schools and community events that expand access to the arts for students with disabilities.
Sara Pauff, 706-320-4469
Source: www.ledger-enquirer.com
Why Obama Is Struggling to Paint Romney as a Wall Street Fat Cat - Atlantic Online
Americans have a dim view of the financial sector, but they're even more skeptical of the government the president heads.
Last week, Barack Obama's super PAC released its latest ad framing Mitt Romney as a de-industrial profiteer. A working man stands outside a vacant plant and says, "Romney and Bain Capital shut this place down. They shut down entire livelihoods."
Meanwhile, reports seemed to affirm Obama's strategy. "Obama's attacks on Romney's Bain Capital past may be paying off," read a Saturday Daily News headline. We still don't know if that's actually true. But this is one executive position where Wall Street-like experience doesn't help. Americans' view of high finance is at a historic low. Most Americans feel stuck in the recession. And Romney campaigns as the businessman who can restore America's fortune, despite disdain for the industry that made his fortune.
Romney would be, if elected, the first financier president. He would also be among the wealthiest. Presidents are almost always rich men. But few presidents have been fabulously rich in their own right. If Romney wins, he would rank as one of two wealthiest presidents since the colonial era, perhaps exceeded by only George Washington.
Of course, the country chose a privileged son to lead it out of the Great Depression. But Franklin Roosevelt's wealth did not derive from the same financial industry stained by the crash. So Romney presents an interesting test of economic populism in American life: Voters will turn against incumbents in hard times. But will some swing voters refuse to turn to an alternative who embodies the class that brought the economy to the brink?
DEBATING ROMNEY'S BUSINESS
Romney presents himself as the businessman who can turn America around. Therefore, naturally, both sides will fight until Election Day to define Romney's business. It's "job creator" versus "job destroyer."
Democrats have the harder task. A survey spurred reports that the Bain strategy was "paying off." PurplePoll found Americans believe private equity firms "hurt" workers more than they "help" the economy by a 47 to 38 percent margin -- and independent voters shared the same view.
But Romney has not paid for that image. Fifty-eight percent of independents say Romney has the "right kind of business experience to reduce the unemployment rate and improve the economy," according to a CNN poll. Only 17 percent of voters overall, in a Fox News poll, term Romney's work at Bain a "bad thing."
Romney the financier is vulnerable. Two-thirds of Americans believe Romney would "do more" than Obama "to advance the economic interests of wealthy Americans," according to an ABC News-Washington Post poll.
But Romney can lose the compassion race and still win the election. Democrats are usually seen as more sympathetic -- ask Al Gore or Michael Dukakis how that worked out. It's the size of Romney's empathy gap that could count. The public believes Obama better understands "the problems faced by ordinary Americans" by a 20-percentage point margin, according to the CNN poll.
It's not business, it's personal. Democrats must brand Romney, really the inner man, with the worst image of his business. Making him seem cold is not enough -- in fact, cold can win. The majority of Americans question the cost of political "warmth" today.
Instead, Obama must define Romney as Republicans often define Democrats -- by relentlessly casting Romney as an elitist. If the Bain gambit can work, it can only do so as full-throated populism, by painting Romney as not only a super-rich elitist but also the boss who "fires you" rather than "hires you." So the Bain strategy does not depend on attacking Romney's qualifications but defining him as a man who lacks presidential qualities. It depends less on Romney's fortune than the perception of how he made it.
At first blush, it seems so easy for the left: define Romney as a greedy moneyman, or as "The Man" closing down industrial America.
It's a myth that Americans measure success by money alone. The American paragon is not the rich man but the "self-made man" (or woman). Nearly nine in 10 Americans say they "admire people who get rich by working hard;" only 27 percent say they "admire people who are rich," according to a Pew Research Center poll.
The last president to rival Romney's wealth was this sort of self-made man. Herbert Hoover rose from pushing ore carts in Nevada to developing mines worldwide, amassing some $93 million in today's dollars. Romney's net worth is between $190 and $255 million, though he carries less economic power than Hoover's fortune did in his day. Hoover was also a blacksmith's son. Romney's father was an auto executive and governor. But the younger Romney made his own fortune. The debate is over how and at whose expense.
Romney's job at Bain was to make wealthy investors wealthier. Bain required a $1 million minimum investment to participate. Those funds helped develop success stories like Staples. It often meant downsizing as well. Romney's investors generally profited whether the investment did or not.
PARTISAN PERCEPTIONS
At first blush, it seems so easy for the left: define Romney as a greedy moneyman, or as "The Man" closing down industrial America. His persona evokes the worst stereotypes of his party and plutocracy. It's reminiscent of John Kerry. Recall Kerry's Boston Brahmin manner and his reference to "Lambert Field."
Kerry's personal net worth, in 2004, was roughly equivalent to Romney's. But if Kerry's assets were combined his wife's fortune, and he won, Kerry probably would have been the wealthiest president ever. Republicans battered Kerry for it. One conservative group spoofed MasterCard's "priceless" commercial. To violins, the ad catalogued the cost of Kerry's haircut ($75), shirts ($250), yacht ($1 million), and mansions ($30 million). It closed: "Another rich liberal elitist from Massachusetts who claims he's a man of the people...priceless."
Kerry fit the image of the "limousine liberal." Cultural populists had a near-ideal antagonist. Economist populists have the same in Romney. Political attacks stick when they confirm preconceived conceptions. Americans still see Republicans as the party of the rich and have, according to polls, for at least a half-century.
This makes Romney an awkward GOP advocate. For example, he opposes ending the hedge-fund tax loophole. That's par for the Republican course, but the loophole also enriches Romney personally. He earned about $21 million annually, in the past two years, at a tax rate of about 14 and 15 percent.
And there are those words. Obama has his gaffes (e.g., "the private sector is doing fine") but Romney's verbal missteps have repeatedly played into Democratic strategies -- "I like firing people," "I'm also unemployed," "I'm not concerned about the very poor." A new anti-Romney Spanish language ad contrasts these words against the times.
But will populism, even today, sway a famously capitalistic electorate?
TEPID POPULISM AND WALL STREET'S PALL
Americans have a populist streak. Three-quarters of the public believe that "there is too much power concentrated in the hands of a few big companies." About six in 10 Americans "disagree" that "corporations generally strike a fair balance between making profits and serving the public interest," according to Pew.
These views have remained steady for decades, however. If this is a populist moment, it's not a matter of shifting perceptions but shifting context. In April, three quarters of Americans told pollsters the nation was "still in a recession." The economy has worsened since.
That has cast a pall over Wall Street. A slim majority value Wall Street's role, but in practice only 36 percent believe it "helps" the economy more than it "hurts." Nearly three quarters of Americans agree that "Wall Street only cares about making money for itself," according to Pew polls. Democrats must brand Romney with that image.
Yet the advocate affects the argument, and that's why Obama struggles to seize this context. The president flirts with populism but he privately presented himself to financial titans as the man between them and the pitchforks.
Obama did win Wall Street reform, albeit reform lite. And Romney vows to repeal the Dodd-Frank law. But Obama cannot easily argue he's firmly on one side of that debate. He was Wall Street's favorite investment in 2008. And although financial-sector employees have donated millions of dollars more to Romney's side this time, Obama remains too close to the Street to make a pure case against it. On the same day he launched an ad attacking Romney's work at Bain, the president was at a top financier's Manhattan home, fundraising at a $35,800-a-head dinner.
Obama is left with the worst of both worlds. Americans see him as too close to Wall Street, while much of Wall Street now sees him as too close to the populists.
Romney may exude high finance. And nearly a third of independent voters, Gallup has found, blame financial institutions for America's economic problems.
But the same poll found that they blame government more, by a two-to-one margin. Obama personifies that government. Likewise, Romney's business record might weaken him in key states like Ohio; the PurplePoll found that views of financial firms were more negative in Ohio than nationwide. But the same survey placed Romney ahead in the state.
Unless the dynamic of 2012 changes, it could come down to the fact that in a contest between men who embody unpopular establishments, only one establishment is actually on the ballot.
Source: www.theatlantic.com
Art attack’ transforms a rundown subway walk (From The Bolton News) - The Bolton News
‘Art attack’ transforms a rundown subway walk
10:10am Sunday 17th June 2012 in Your Town
MUMS, kids and volunteers launched an art attack in a run-down subway.
About 20 pupils from Kearsley Academy joined forces with three artists to cover the walls of the dis- mal subway under the Kearsley roundabout with a colourful mural for the community to enjoy.
Plans to spruce up the area began in February when a group of mums got fed up of walking past the graffiti-covered walls everyday on the school run.
Together the six women formed the Kearsley and Farnworth Vision Group and started the sub- way project with Kearsley Acade- my.
Sharon Tonge, chairman of the group, said: “Everyone has loved doing it and we’ve had so many people comment on how much bet- ter it looks now.
“It’s more brilliant than I could have imagined.
“The kids have absolutely loved painting it with the artists, and the girls from Asda who came down to help for the day were great, too.”
Sharon, aged 41, hopes to tackle the roundabout’s second walkway with primary school pupils from Kearsley West and Spindle Point for their next project. Pupils from Kearsley Academy’s school coun- cil worked in teams to brainstorm ideas for the mural before finalis- ing their choice of designs last week.
The artwork focused on giving out “positive and inspiring” mes- sages to the community who use the subway.
Offenders from the community payback scheme also helped clean up the walkway, working for 35 hours to scrub off the anti-vandal paint.
Dave Bowyer, who manages the community payback teams for the Greater Manchester Probation Trust (GMPT), said: “I am delight- ed that teams of offenders rigor- ously supervised by GMPT have completed this project and have, in a very real way, paid back to the community against which they offended.”
Tracy Fenton and her team of artists from Bolton’s ArtFantastic organisation outlined the artwork before the pupils set to work with their paintbrushes.
Tracy said:”It’s a piece of public artwork and the feedback has been absolutely overwhelming.
“People have said that the posi- tive message and colours of the mural makes them feel safer when they’re walking through the sub- way.”
Source: www.theboltonnews.co.uk
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