Teaching figure drawing and water color classes at Morehead State University, Mckinney along with five employed students and volunteers are creating a 1500 square feet mural that depicts the story of Noah’s Ark. The 10 foot tall mural explores different “scenes” in the narrative and requires preliminary planning and post painting ingenuity. One of
the most different phases of the mural is the application
of the canvas to the wall, which has not been attempted. It
will hang in the newly constructed day-care center
at King’s Daughters Medical Center in Ashland, Kentucky. The
building is Mediterranean style; the courtyard, for
security reasons, is closed off in the middle of the
building and serves as the play area for the children. Because
nature is obscured by the walls, the mural surrounds
the area and creates an environment of activity and
natural scenes (water, animals, and beautiful color). McKinney
hopes that by being surrounded by and exposed to art
at such a young age, children will be naturalized to
it, rather than alienated or threatened by it. To
appreciate art is not to elevate it to the sublime,
it is to make it a part of everyday life. McKinney
also gets the personal satisfaction of seeing
art students “bloom” by realizing what they can achieve. Cooperation
provides a sense of community and results in eclectic
art. This is, McKinney feels, the best environment
for creative growth, and the best style of teaching. He
was influenced by his own instructors during college
experience in the early seventies.
•••
To pursue higher education in
Appalachia at this time was not as common or as commonly
publicized as dropping out of high school. The
predicament of lack of education was cited again and
again as need for training programs and more industry
to allow Appalachians to help themselves overcome poverty. Those
that became college educated in other kinds of skills
besides industrial jobs then left the region looking
for openings to accommodate their training. In
James Branscome’s 1969 essay, The Crisis of Appalachian
Youth, it is stated, “ While college graduates
are demanded as leaders for the Region, only one out
of ten Appalachian students goes on to college,” (Walls
and Stephenson,224) and, “Demographic studies indicate
that those trained in the Region’s colleges migrate
in significant numbers to other areas,” (225). The
demographic findings were reflective less of apathy
than of lack of finances. As related in Appalachia: A
Regional Geography. “The 36 Appalachian counties
in Kentucky, traditionally the region’s poorest state,
had a median income of only $1,392 in 1949….In 1969
the median income for Appalachian Kentucky was only
1 percent of the national figure,”(Raitz and Ulack,
172). Apathy was often sited as a factor for
dropping out of school. To the contrary, during
the time of Branscome’s essay, for many young men,
fear of the Vietnam War draft was a bigger motivator
than any apathy, and the Appalachian region was hard
hit by casualties. McKinney lost four close friends
to the Vietnam War. |
