Growing up in rural Catahoula Parish in the time that I did, there was no exposure to the arts as we know them today. If you were an artist, you were self-taught; there were a few piano teachers for kids lucky enough to have a piano in the house and parents who insisted that they learn to play it. Block High School had a band, and sometimes a Glee Club (singing group), and our elementary teachers let us sing several days a week, and sometimes we got to draw pictures on paper stapled to an easel. That was pretty much all that we knew or were taught about the ‘arts.’