ABH: The paint, and interpretations, fly at museum

Last Saturday's Athens Banner-Herald had the following story by Christopher Butler:

At the age of 4, Grayson Fraker of Winterville has drawn rainbows arching through the sky, Spiderman leaping tall buildings and spaceships hurtling toward the moon, but he faced a new artistic challenge Saturday.

Grayson and 120 other kids tried their hands at abstract painting - sort of.

They could visit the Georgia Museum of Art's Suitcase Paintings exhibit, and then it was time to let the paint fly behind the museum, where they were invited to fling paint brushes, roll paint-sodden balls or swipe paint-covered fingers across paper canvases.

Adults usually interpret abstract art in wildly different ways, and children are no different, said Cecelia Hinton, the museum's curator of education.

Hinton watched a brother and sister interpret a painting Saturday - he said two dots represented someone's eyes, while she thought the dots represented a fire.

"Children will say things that have an awful lot of truth and there's no greater opportunity to understand them than to hear what they think about abstract art," Hinton said.

Grayson was outside the museum steps drawing his first ever piece of abstract art, which he and his mother proudly put on display for anyone who passed by.

His inspiration came from the abstract paintings he saw in the museum which "were just weird and funny," Grayson said.

"I don't really know what I've drawn. I only know that it's black, green, blue, red and white," Grayson said, adding he would part with his painting for $5 and a stack of baseball cards.

Meanwhile, Isabella Jordan, 8, from Atlanta also had no idea what she was painting as she dipped a rubber ball in different colors of paint and rolled the ball around a blank sheet of paper, creating squiggly wavy lines.

"I don't know what to say about what this picture means or what people are supposed to think. It's just messy," Jordan said.

Lots of the budding artists admitted they were more into making a mess than a masterpiece, but not 8-year-old Isaac Parham of Colbert.

He usually draws pictures of Pokemon and dinosaurs, but on Saturday chose a more obscure theme.

"This picture is supposed to be my idea of what 'crazy' looks like," Parham said.

Images: (1) From left, Grayson Fraker, 4, and Emily Maynor, 7, both of Winterville, throw paint onto their paper as Gabrielle Mason of Athens watches Isabella Jordan, 8, of Atlanta paint Saturday at the Georgia Museum of Art during the "Flying Paint" family day; and (2) Yeyoung Kang, 4, of Athens paints an abstract painting using techniques of the late American painter Jackson Pollack on Saturday at the Georgia Museum of Art, during the "Flying Paint" family day. The interpretations proved as varied as the artwork. Both images from the linked article.