IT'S A SMALL WORLD, AFTER ALL: PROFESSOR FINDS SIMILARITIES IN ART BY CHILDREN OF THE WORLD

During the past decade, Dr. Edwin Smith has spent his summer vacations traveling the world to collect art. He now possesses more than 4,000 drawings and paintings from 23 countries and the United States -- all of them by children.

The professor of art education at Southeast Missouri State University is interested in the visual symbols 6-year-olds, 8-year-olds and 10-year-olds use in their art.

"I wanted to see if they did the same things in all different cultures," he said.

Everywhere, children's visual symbols are people, houses, pets, trees and landscapes.

"There are far more similarities than differences," Smith said.

Children everywhere draw. In Japan, schoolchildren study art for some length of time every day and have the best materials.

"In underdeveloped countries where they don't have sophisticated art materials, children draw in the soil or sand," Smith said.

He chose to study children who are 6, 8 and 10 because each age is a peak of a developmental stage in symbol making.

By age 6, children tend to anchor their drawings with a line across the bottom. To educators, this is a telltale sign a child is ready to begin reading.

Color is not important to 6-year-olds. Their skies won't necessarily be blue.

Eight-year-olds are Smith's favorite artists.

"If I could teach any individuals I wanted to, it would be second-graders," he said. "They do so many things visually."

One similarity in 8-year-olds is a drawing technique called "fold-over." To an adult, flowers along a sidewalk in the child's drawing might appear to be lying down, or people sitting around a table might seem to be lying on their backs, but the children are demonstrating their idea of space.

Eight-year-olds also use X-ray pictures, for instance, a box within a drawing of a house that shows the stairs to the child's room. The human figure will be completely symmetrical, with two eyes, two ears. Ten-year-olds, by contrast, turn figures into profile because they have trouble drawing noses.

Smith's favorite of all the paintings was done by an 8-year-old Japanese girl. The girl started drawing with pencil.

"Then she got some tube watercolors like Jake Wells would have used," Smith said, referring to the esteemed watercolor painter who died recently.

The girl mixed colors to get flesh tones and kept on mixing them for other effects.

"This is a far superior job of mixing colors than you can find in one of our university classes," Smith said.

By the age of 10, children start to discover planes. He points to a drawing in which people appear to be floating in the air.

"This is visual expression, art," Smith says. "It's not meant to look like a photograph."

In Peru, when asked to draw a picture of "Me and my family at home," a girl drew a street scene of herself and her mother. The teacher told Smith the girl and her mother are homeless.

"When something is bothering children, it will enter into their drawings and paintings," Smith said.

Whenever he sees stick figures he knows the child's art has been influenced for the worse by an adult.

"We should leave children alone and let them express their ideas without an adult saying, 'Draw this figure using these sticks,'" Smith said.

Imposing that kind of restriction "can destroy a child's creativity," Smith said, "and that can last a lifetime."

His treks abroad have taken him to public, private and parochial schools, but he found the type of school made little difference in the art children make.

Smith noted also few differences in the art made by different sexes. Boys tended to draw more pictures of airplanes and tractors; girls more flowers and trees.

Culture does seem to affect color choices. In India, children used many pinks and purples. In Mexico and Peru, they used brilliant colors and drew pictures of festivals and holidays.

In 1991, Smith began his art collection from children in Bulgaria, then in 1992, he went to Hong Kong, China and Japan. He went to India, France and Italy in 1993, Australia and New Zealand in 1994 and Canada in 1995.

During the summer of 1996, he visited schools in England, Germany, Austria, Spain, Hungary, the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland, and in 1997 went to Mexico, followed in 1998 with a trip to Kenya.

In June, Smith's latest art-scouting trip took him to Brazil, Chile and Peru. Next summer he wants to go to Russia and Poland.

At every locale, he also evaluated the schools' curriculum, methods and facilities.

Smith started his career in education teaching in the Kansas City elementary schools.

"Elementary schools are where it's happening and where we need the best teachers," he said of art education.

He arranged to go to the schools through his membership in the International Society of Education through Art.

A exhibit of some of the drawings is on display at the Art Building on the Southeast campus, and he plans to compile a book of the artwork and his findings.

The main difference he has found in his travels is one of attitudes toward art.

"In Japan they believe art is just as important as math or science," Smith said. "They believe a child must be well-rounded. They are light-years ahead of us in America."

In Chile, children were drawing on pieces of cardboard, "but they went at it," Smith said.

Children everywhere love to draw if we let them, Smith said, adding: "Our children get in the car and if the windows are frosty or steamed up they will draw on those windows. Sometimes they draw on the side of the table with pieces of food."