Deepa Bharath “Can I have some blue?”...

Deepa Bharath

“Can I have some blue?”

The well-built teenager hunched over a dining table, temporarily

transformed into a work table, asked for some colored sand to fill a

prefabricated pattern.

It was a cheerful-looking design -- dolphins frolicking in the

ocean.

Ramsey, 17, took the sand and spread it over the patterned piece

of paper. All he had to do was peel off adhesive strips from the

pattern and fill that area with a color of his choice.

Art therapist Janet Carroll opened a bag of coarse blue sand,

emptied it in a clear, plastic cup and handed it down to Ramsey.

Carroll came to Costa Mesa-based South Coast Children’s Center

more than five years ago to teach self-esteem, anger management and

music therapy to the abused or neglected children who sought shelter

in the center’s group homes.

She didn’t think the kids would care for her mandolin or her “kind

of music.” So she started them on art projects. She refers to the

children as “boys” most of the time because there are very few girls

in the group homes.

The Daily Pilot is not using the children’s last names because of

their background of abuse or neglect.

“The boys love doing art,” Carroll said, eyeing the students

around the table who were engrossed in their work. “They get excited

about it. They get anxious if I’m late to a session. They say: ‘Art

lady! You’re late.’”

The boys would jostle and shove each other on the playground. But

when they gathered around a table with their art, they were on a

different kind of playing field.

“There would be no sound, no nothing,” Carroll said. “They’re just

so intense. So hard at work.”

Around the table in that Costa Mesa group home on a recent

afternoon were Ramsey and two other boys -- Joe and Brian, both 14.

Joe is torn between the dolphins and a Mickey Mouse picture.

“I’m making this one for my girlfriend,” he said. “I don’t know if

she’d like the dolphins or Mickey.”

He held the Mickey Mouse pattern for a second and put it down.

“Nah,” he dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “I think she’ll

like the dolphin one better.”

“I’m making one for my mom and one for my grandma,” Brian said.

Brian was the quiet one. He only looked up and smiled when Joe,

who plays football for his high school, gave Ramsey a hard time about

going to a rival high school.

“Can I have some gray, please?” Joe borrowed sand to color his

dolphins.

“Good choice of color, Joe,” Carroll said.

Ramsey hadn’t quite decided who he’ll give the painting to. Ramsey

always seemed to think and pause before he talked. But, when he

spoke, the words seemed to flow smoothly.

“I can see how art’s therapy,” he said, without taking his eye off

the dolphins. “It really relaxes you. It calms you down and it gets

your mind off everything.”

Sometimes, he thinks about a problem.

“If I have a problem, that is,” he added, as he stopped to admire

his work. “That’s an awesome color, man. That’s just rad.”

Joe talked quickly. His eyes sparkled and danced around as he

smiled mischievously. Some day, he would be an NFL player, a lawyer

(“because I talk and talk and talk”) or an FBI agent.

“You get a gun, you have a bullet-proof vest and you save lives --

you’re cool,” he ruled with finality.

Ramsey let out a mute laugh as he muttered under his breath,

“Yeah, right.”

Joe looks at art differently. It’s a messy puzzle he can’t wait to

piece together.

“When I’m out playing football, it’s physical,” he said. “This is

mental. I’m always thinking, like, how to draw a squiggle, how to

fill in paint or sand like I’m doing now. It’s like puzzles. You’ve

got to find the right color with the right pieces.”

Joe also got a little lesson on realizing what he can do.

“I could never paint before,” he said. Then he tried doing a

watercolor rendition of Trunks, his favorite character in the popular

Japanese animation feature, “Dragon Ball Z.”

“I found I had skills I never thought I had before,” Joe said. “I

learned to work better with my hands.”

In a flash, Joe bolted up to his room and came back with his

Trunks painting and some of his Dragon Ball Z collectibles.

“This is tight, huh?” he asked rhetorically, showing off his

painting.

Art is also cathartic for Joe.

“You learn how to express yourself,” he said. “If you feel angry

or rebellious, you could use a dark color, like the dark blue here.

If you’re happy you could use light blue. You could show your mood,

you know? Express it.”

Brian doesn’t look at art as therapy.

“Art’s art,” he said, with a nod.

Ramsey suddenly remembered a Native-American leather item with

beads that he gave his mom “years ago.”

“She still has it hanging in her car,” he said, smiling.

Carroll said while many of her students feel gratified when their

work is appreciated by her, a family member or a staff member at the

group home, many, like Joe, use the sessions to vent.

“That’s why, when I start with a group, I let them work with

leather and mallets,” she said. “The pounding helps them. Some anger

comes out that way.”

Of course, there are boys and girls who find art boring and are

“grumpy about doing it,” but a majority love it, Carroll said. It

also teaches them self-esteem.”Some boys come in with low

confidence,” she said. “They feel anything they choose is going to be

bad. I’ve seen that change when they make their own choices with

their art and the work turns out to be good.”

Then there are those who can never conform and always feel the

urge to color out of the lines, so to speak.

“I had a boy once who could only do an unproject,” Carroll said.

“He’d use all the art supplies I gave him, but he’d never make what

he was supposed to make. He did his own thing, and it always looked

good.”

As the session came to a close, Ramsey and Brian had made two sand

paintings. Joe was happy with one.

“I hope my girlfriend likes it,” he said.

And then, taking a closer look at his dolphins, he added: “She’ll

like it.”

* DEEPA BHARATH covers public safety and courts. She may be

reached at (949) 574-4226 or by e-mail at deepa.bharath@ latimes.com.