Arts & Entertainment

Happy Hour Tonight for the Arts

Just $5 can bus a teenager to visit an artist.

Because of a lack of about $100, a busload of teenagers from Philly did not get to see how Lisa Naples and other Bucks County artists make a living making art.

"Last year, we had 200 students from eight schools come out, but two more schools in Philadelphia were scheduled and planning to come," said Naples, a ceramic artist with a studio in Doylestown Township. "They were told the day before that they had to have the money in hand, ahead of time. These are poor schools; there’s just no way they could make that happen."

A fundraiser in Doylestown Thursday night hopes to prevent that from happening again this year.

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Thursday from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., a Love of Bucks Arts Happy Hour aims to raise money for the student education day during the Elephant's Eye art tour in May. Tickets to the fundraiser, which is at Doylestown's Freight House on Ashland Street, are $25 per person.

Of that, $15 is tax deductible and will help pay for buses to bring talented young art students to the studios of Bucks County artists. The fundraiser is co-hosted by Furia Rubel and BucksHappening.com.

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Can't attend the fundraiser? You can donate directly using the online link.

Organizers hope to raise $2,500 to pay for buses to bring art students, especially those from Philadelphia and Trenton, to watch the artists work in their studios.

The idea is to show teenagers with a proclivity toward the arts that it is possible to make art your occupation.

"An artist's studio is a very private place. As a kid, I didn’t have any role models as artists. It doesn’t show up among the doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs," said Naples. "It didn’t occur to me, when I was waiting tables at the shore on weekends, that I could build a life with art at the center."

Elephant's Eye is a nonprofit that brings together contemporary artists and the community. For two weekends in May, some of Bucks County's artists open their studios to the public to share their work, their inspiration and their space with those who want to learn more about it.

The day before the tour opens, the artists of Elephant's Eye extend the same hand of hospitality to area high school students who are interested in the arts.

Getting the students to the studios, though, requires transportation, a bigger hurdle than ever before as schools face budget shortages.

"Transportation is one of the biggest hurdles for us to overcome in serving our members," said Matt Bryan of Art-Reach, a Philadelphia nonprofit that works to expose poor and disadvantaged people to the arts.

"If you’re taking a school group, a bus can be anywhere from $100 to $200 to $400," Bryan said. "But $200 might be an agency's budget for the arts for the whole month. To say that we can pay the cost of a bus to get them there is what makes it possible."

Bryan is working with Elephant's Eye education coordinator John McDevitt, a sculptor with a studio in New Hope, to bring students from Belmont Charter School out to Bucks County for the arts tour.

Last year's education day brought students groups from area schools, including woodworking students from Bucks County Community College, high-functioning autistic elementary school students from Warwick, and teens from Central Bucks high schools.

"What was cool about this trip was that I was shown that I could actually go places with art," said CB West student Rica Dow, in a testimonial for Elephant's Eye. "I thought it was extremely hard to be successful but it is truly a passion of mine and I plan on going to art school for ceramics and glass."

If you are an educator and would like to schedule a studio visit, contact edu@elephantseyetour.org.

Elephant's Eye got its name from the reference in Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical Oklahoma: "the corn was as high as an elephant's eye." Oscar Hammerstein II lived in Doylestown.

Tour dates this year are May 14 and 15 and May 21 and 22. Admission is free. For a map and information about the artists, see the group's website.


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