Get on the bus

By David Maurer

Published: July 27, 2008

School buses don’t usually generate excitement in and of themselves.

Then there’s the Fun Bus.

When it arrived at Pen Park for its public unveiling, the bus was mobbed by dozens of screaming kids.

The metal retiree recently underwent an artistic makeover to make it more reflective of its new role.

Amya Allen summed up her thoughts beautifully as she looked at the freshly painted bus, which will be used to transport children to and from camps and activities put on by Charlottesville Parks and Recreation.

“I like the bus, because it’s so pretty,” said Amya, who soon will be entering first grade.

The multi-hue bus also will serve as a symbol of the city’s dedication to the arts and its strong spirit of community and cooperation. A number of organizations, as well as a multitude of kids and adults, joined together to transform the vehicle from its standard school-bus yellow to its distinctive and meaningful appearance.

The Thomas bus had served its tour of duty as a city school bus and was earmarked to be traded in. Then officials decided it could be put to better use serving as a shuttle for local kids.

The bus could have done the job with no modifications to its appearance. But as it

entered its second career with its upbeat

new moniker, the bus needed a new look that would generate excitement.

“Mike Svetz, head of Charlottesville Parks and Recreation, called me and said they wanted to paint the bus so it didn’t look like an everyday school bus,” said Maggie Guggenheimer, executive director of the Piedmont Council of the Arts.

“The PCA is the designated arts agency of Charlottesville and Albemarle County, and we’ve existed in that capacity for many years. Beginning this year we’ve been deepening our relationships with city agencies, like Parks and Recreation and the school system.

“We’ve positioned the organization to be the go-to agency whenever anything comes along that’s arts-related and needs to happen. Because of that, Mike called me and I began looking at how to coordinate the effort.”

Guggenheimer started by looking at available resources in the community. She quickly realized that the Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative would be an ideal fit for the project.

The mission of the Bridge is to help facilitate the exploration of the creative process in Charlottesville. The nonprofit organization helps support the works of emerging artists.

Since its inception in the fall of 2004, the Bridge has been involved in several hands-on, education-orientated works with young people in the community, as well as public arts projects. Guggenheimer got in touch with Greg Kelly, program director and cofounder of the organization, and they started brainstorming ideas.

“As Greg and I began to build an idea for how the project might unfold, we knew we needed to find local artists who would bring their vision to the table,” Guggenheimer said. “Neither of our representing agencies were going to dictate how the bus would look.

“Sanda Iliescu, a professor of art and architecture at the University of Virginia, expressed a lot of interest in taking on the project. From the beginning she was focused on how the kids could be involved in designing elements of the bus.”

Iliescu took on the job of lead designer and came up with the concept. Three local artists, John Bylander, Mike Parisi and Isabella Scott, joined her team to turn the concept into reality.

“This whole project has been exciting for me, because I love teaching art and I love teaching workshops for kids,” Iliescu said. “I had three artists working with me, and we started by just throwing out ideas and talking about them.

“I started thinking about landscape and thought, ‘Let’s make it a light, happy bus with many colors — something that looked summery.’

“I had the idea of making it green at the bottom and then gradually lighter as it moved up to the sky. I was looking at the sky one evening and it was kind of rosy pink, and it reminded me of Homer’s phrase, ‘The rosy-fingered dawn.’ ”

The ancient Greek poet was the inspiration for two tones of pink painted along the side of the bus in horizontal bands that rest on strips of lime green and yellow. Complementing the bright colors are depictions of blades of grass that are the signature feature of the design scheme.

“I especially wanted to pick out an element we find everywhere,” Iliescu said as she looked at the bus with the critical eye of an artist. “Not flowers, big trees or fancy things, but blades of grass.

“I started working with blades of grass six or seven years ago. I was reading some of Walt Whitman’s poems, and they’re inspiring. It’s an amazing way of celebrating the modest and the everyday as opposed to the extraordinary.

“So we designed a workshop for kids, where we had them go out and pick blades of grass. We then had them notice things like the different shades of green, the flexibility, the smell.

“They then traced the shadow of the blade of grass onto paper. What is seen on the side of the bus are many of the silhouettes the kids drew.”

The professor said she likes to interject elements from other disciplines, such as geometry or arithmetic, into art classes she gives to children. During the blades of grass workshops she talked about tangents and how the curve of the grass can react with a straight line.

This element of learning is represented in bright red tangent lines that help to highlight the pieces of grass. The end result is a look of cheery elegance.

“I think the bus is amazing,” Kelly said, raising his voice to be heard above the din of excited children running in and around the parked focus of attention. “It’s above and beyond our expectations.

“It’s a beautiful blend of the vision of the artists who put it together, and all the kids who contributed to it. The workshops were held at various locations all around the city, so a lot of kids got to participate.

“This was the first time we’ve worked directly with the city in a major way — especially with Parks and Rec. It was a great experience, and we ended up with a great bus.”

Much of the paintwork took place at the city’s fleet yard, where school buses are maintained. Scott said without the help and expertise of the workers at the yard the project would have taken much longer, and the result wouldn’t have been nearly as good.

“We wanted the bus to be aesthetically pleasing and also translate what we got from the kids,” Scott said. “Probably the biggest challenge was actually transferring the drawings the kids did onto the bus and getting that fine detail.

“The fleet guys really helped us a huge amount in laying it all out. They taught us so much about detailing.

“We’ve been at the fleet yard for about two weeks doing this, and they were always right there to help us.”

The Fun Bus is just that, inside and out. Clinging to the ceiling and helping to carry the festive atmosphere from exterior to interior is an array of magnetic-backed images of buses the kids colored.

“I like it because it has different buses on the top of it,” 6-year-old Lakori Brooks said of the Fun Bus. “It’s so cool, I want to have it for myself.”

“I think it’s cool because of the colors,” said 8-year-old Katelyn Williams.

Shymia Washington, 6, said she liked the colors and the little buses stuck to the ceiling. But the thing she liked the most was that it had a name all its own.

“It’s called the Fun Bus,” Shymia said. “See in the front, with the different colors? It says ‘Fun Bus.’ ”

In years to come, Shymia and her friends likely will remember with great fondness the colorful bus that took them to and from exciting adventures. And wherever it goes, Fun Bus will say many things without having to utter a single word.

“We want this bus to move around town as a symbol of Parks and Recreation,” Guggenheimer said. “It’s a component of our city that’s really special and provides a lot of great opportunities for everybody, young and old.

“What this project shows is that we have an incredible amount of resources here — some of which we don’t even know about, whether it’s fleet guys who can become artists at a drop of a hat or kids who jumped right into a process as simple as drawing a blade of grass.

“We really are a very rich community.”

An exhibit featuring the Fun Bus and all the drawings, photographs, studies and ephemera it generated will be from 4 to 8 p.m. Aug. 1 at the Bridge at 205 Monticello Road in Belmont.