Bentley Hill, an 8-year-old artist who recently participated in a summer art class at the Meridian Museum of Art, has arrived at the realization that there’s nothing neat about art.

“You can’t have art unless it’s messy,” she said.

Bentley was among several children in the museum last week taking a class in printmaking, bookbinding, cartooning and origami — all intricate, and potentially messy, activities that escape the boundaries of what some might associate with art.

And that’s part of the idea. The students’ instructor, Cary Haycox, a certified art teacher at the Meridian Museum of Art and at Northwest Middle School, said introducing students to a “new way to do art” was among his key goals.

“Most people, when you talk to them and ask them what they think art is, say ‘painting or drawing,’” Haycox said. “So for me, I love to introduce them to different methods of doing art.”

Haycox said the museum’s summer art classes receive funding through the Phil Hardin Foundation.

Joshua Williams, a graduate of Meridian High School who’s headed to the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, helped out with the program during a recent session. Williams, who was program director of the National Art Honor Society at Meridian High School, said he likes to work with acrylic paints — and he likes to leave the stories embedded in his paintings unfinished.

“I’ll sometimes leave my pieces undone, so half will be painted and half will be sketched,” he explained. “I feel like it leaves the artwork more open for interpretation rather than having it be my personal view. You can imagine what the other part of it will be.”

That sort of mental outreach extends into the way Williams works with children, as he tries to meet them on their own imaginative turf.

“You have to relate it to them,” he said. “You have to make it interesting to them.”

Williams might ask children, for instance, if they have a favorite superhero — and then he helps them to build their pieces from there.

Cara McQuaig, an intern working at the museum through The Riley Foundation, said her own artwork focuses on graphic design and painting — interests that were fueled at Meridian Community College. McQuaig was a graphic design student at MCC when she took a drawing class taught by John Marshall.

During the class, she said, “I absolutely fell in love with art,” and soon she decided to pursue art education. McQuaig, who lives in Meridian, will be headed to the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, in Boston, where she’ll continue her studies in the fall.

McQuaig said she, too, tries to help children connect art with their own experiences.

“I try to let them use art as a positive outlet for anything that might be going on in their own life,” she said.

Haycox, in addition to teaching art at the museum, has visited programs at the Boys & Girls Club of East Mississippi and the Meridian Freedom Project. Just as he does at the museum, Haycox said he tries to nudge students’ views of art beyond expected activities such as drawing and painting.

“Sometimes you see students who have drawn a lot, but their only outlet was to draw with a pencil,” he said. “Now they see there’s so much more.”

Even an activity such as doodling, Haycox explained, can be cultivated. He recalled helping a student who tended to doodle in class make artistic use of those doodles rather than discard them. With some assistance from Haycox, she managed to construct a collage blending the notes and the doodles — a kind of artistic validation of both.

Haycox noted, though, both the creative potential and the distracting danger of the doodle.

“You do want to encourage (students) to continue doing art,” he said, “but you also want them to find that balance: between listening and learning in the class, and having that moment of doodling.” 

Art classes at the museum are slated to resume July 10, and people seeking more information about the entire summer of art classes at the Meridian Museum of Art can go to www.meridianmuseum.org.