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CNN Sunday Morning

Young People Use Art as Emotional Outlet

Aired September 23, 2001 - 07:49   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOHN KING, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: And as our Jeanne Meserve explains here many youngsters are being encouraged to sit down and draw as an emotional outlet.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

SHERRY WATKINS, SONGWRITER: I can't believe the horror -- the questions and the drag. How can people do this?

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sherrie Watkins (ph) says this song just poured out of her the day after the terrorists struck.

WATKINS: Those words didn't come from me -- they just came through me. I was just a gate.

MESERVE: Art is an expression of emotion and it's not uncommon for artists to find motivation in horrific events.

DAVID LEVY, DIRECTOR, THE CORCORAN GALLERY: When they are very powerfully motivated by profound forces in their lives such as this kind of a tragedy they -- it very often stimulates them to heights that they might otherwise not achieve.

MESERVE: Whether working with pastels or piano or a writer's pen the act of creating can be a catharsis.

CYNTHIA RIMMER, ART STUDENT: It's just a way to get things out really quickly.

MESERVE: These Corcoran art students were evacuated twice since the attacks because of security concerns -- their school only two blocks from the White House.

On a stretch of canvas hung along a corridor they purge their emotions. Jessica McMillan drew her inspiration from news footage.

JESSICA MCMILLAN, ART STUDENT: When I looked at her face all I could think of was like -- is she really there, how much pain was she feeling, was she communicating (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

MESERVE: Knowing how therapeutic art can be some schools have encouraged children to draw.

KATHIE CLEMENTS, THIRD GRADE TEACHER: She wanted to do something beautiful and she thought of the flowers because it was too hard for her to think about the events that had taken place.

DAVID VICKERS, ART TEACHER: This child drawing the window repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly -- these containers -- these squares attempting in some sense to contain this -- the fears and the concerns.

MESERVE: Some wield their markers fiercely using strong colors, showing their agitation. But sometimes art requires a harnessing of emotion. Students evacuated from a photojournalism class at the Corcoran walked two miles to the Pentagon to capture events there following their instincts.

KEVIN GILBERT, PHOTOJOURNALISM INSTRUCTOR: To be thrown into the midst of one of the greatest journalist moments of our lifetime and to be right down at the Pentagon, shooting and thinking like photo journalists was incredible.

MESERVE: Art is not just for those who make it -- it is for those who view it or hear it. And for us, too, it can be a tonic.

WATKINS: One nation under God, united we will stand.

MESERVE: Stand and go on and create.

WATKINS: And all of us must stand.

MESERVE: Jeanne Meserve, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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