Arkansas Arts Academy boss and students combine talents for postcard project

ROGERS -- The school's chief administrator drew the bicycle-themed artwork. Students in a creative writing class provided the poetry.

Together they produced a set of 20 postcards the Arkansas Arts Academy will sell to raise money for its cycling and creative writing programs.

Mary Ley, the school's chief executive officer, said she spent two years on the drawings, which make up the front of each postcard. Each drawing relates to cycling. Most are set in Rogers and elsewhere in Northwest Arkansas.

Ley asked Anne Wenzel, a creative writing teacher, to ask students from a literature course to each pick a drawing and write a poem about it. A poem appears on the back of 16 of the 20 postcards.

The students didn't know who drew the pictures. They completed the assignment toward the end of last school year, but Ley didn't receive the first batch of postcards until Aug. 28.

Milo Richardson, an academy junior, wrote about a drawing that depicts a woman pedaling her bicycle in downtown Rogers. Something about the drawing revived memories of a Bentonville neighborhood where she once lived.

"It made me feel really nostalgic. I started writing and couldn't stop," Richardson said.

Abby Alexander, also a junior, wrote a 14-line poem about a woman standing outside the Iron Horse Coffee Company in Rogers, holding a steaming cup of coffee in one hand while gripping her bicycle with the other.

"The first thing I noticed was she has a cup of coffee in her hand, and you need two hands to ride a bike," Alexander said. "And I began thinking about what it would be like to just stand there and wait to drink your coffee before you can actually leave."

Ley said she did all 20 drawings in color pencil and put 50 to 60 hours into each one. She called drawing her version of meditation.

Biking always has been an important part of her life, and she wanted to express her appreciation of living in a biking community and particularly her gratitude for brothers Tom and Steuart Walton, who have poured money into bike trails in Northwest Arkansas.

Runway Group, a Bentonville-based organization founded by the Walton brothers, paid for the printing of 300 sets of the postcards, including a custom band for each set. The organization focuses on growing the state's cultural and economic infrastructure.

Ley's efforts to highlight the region with her artwork, coupled with the students' poetry, comprised a feel-good project the Runway Group felt was worth supporting, said Mike Abb, the group's creative director.

Abb wasn't certain what Runway paid, but said it "wasn't a lot."

The school will sell each pack of postcards for $20. They should be ready to buy this week; information on how to buy will be published on the school's website at ArtsK12.org and its Facebook page, Ley said.

Ley aimed to send messages through her art.

"I wanted to show kids how the bike can be the device of choice over a technology device once they become skilled," she said. "I wanted to show how healthy and beautiful a woman can appear when she rides just for enjoyment and feeling connected to the environment. I wanted to show that the best dates can be simple with the compatibility of riding the bikes side by side together."

The students saw more in her artwork than she did, Ley said.

"Their poems strengthened my art. They far exceeded my expectations," she said.

One of Ley's drawings shows two kids sitting on their bicycles while both hold onto the iconic Susie-Q Malt Shop sign that once stood outside the North Second Street business. Ley snapped a photo of the sign to assist with her drawing. The next day, someone drove into it and knocked it down, she said. The sign, which had stood for decades, hasn't been replaced.

Wenzel said she thinks of art as highlighting parts of her life that otherwise would go unnoticed. When she rides her bicycle through places Ley drew and her students wrote about, she's more aware of them now.

"It layers your experience of places in really meaningful ways," she said.