Columbia, Mo. ? If you want to talk about art, pull up a chair and broach the subject with Yvonne Piersee.

Get comfortable — this 16-year-old has a lot to say. She might seem a bit standoffish at first, but that’s just her way of stepping back and measuring your seriousness about the subject.

Art is important to Piersee, and a quick flash of her somber eyes reveals that she won’t risk vulnerability in the face of someone who doesn’t believe in the value of creativity. That would hurt too much.

So Piersee eases into the conversation like a cat approaching a stranger, crouched and ready to run.

“I’ve always liked art,” she says. “I was always drawing, but I did other stuff, too. Once, when I was itty-bitty, I made a picture for my mom and glued rose petals all around it. I was always doing stuff like that.”

Painting for pay

On this warm June morning, Piersee and nine other Columbia teenagers are transforming discarded windows into works of art, which they will sell at the Columbia Festival of the Arts in September. Each student has a battered pane and frame to paint and decorate.

No, this isn’t a summer camp project. Piersee and her comrades earn minimum wage — $5.15 an hour — to produce community art projects through Columbia’s Career Awareness Related Experience program.

Started in 1982, the Parks and Recreation Department program has placed about 140 students, ages 14 to 18, each summer with employers such as day-care centers, business offices and the public library. The students work about 22 hours a week and attend educational sessions.

Danny Giles, 14, helps work on a mural on the west wall of Shakespeare's Pizza in downtown Columbia, Mo. Giles is part of an art program this summer taught by Ned Vail, who was contracted to paint the mural.

Now in its fourth year, the CARE Gallery, which is run in collaboration with the city’s Office of Cultural Affairs, employs a select group of those teenagers — some of whom are considered at-risk — to produce creative work. Eligible students must submit a portfolio of their artwork before being selected to work at the gallery.

Local artist Ned Vail, who started the gallery and continues to coordinate it, will instruct the young artists this summer in a variety of projects, including finishing a mural at Shakespeare’s Pizza, designing banners for Columbia’s annual First Night celebration and making stage props for Theater Reaching Young People & Schools. The students also will create works for sale, such as the windows, to help finance the gallery next summer.

Sales from the students’ art projects over the past year generated about $700, Vail said. Not bad for a group of artists who are almost all too young to vote.

Program attracts artists

In the past, the students met in the basement of the Armory Sports Center, but this year, their studio is at the city’s house and storage shed in Rock Quarry Park. Inside a garage, long tables are set up in a U shape, and the students work as Vail circles the room, inspecting their progress and making suggestions. It’s only the second day of the program, and the students are still a bit shy around their teacher.

“Very nice,” Vail says to Danny Giles, a soft-spoken 14-year-old with dreadlocks.

“Thanks,” Giles says. He avoids eye contact but is clearly pleased with the praise. He returns to his window art, reapplying paint to his elaborate design featuring what appear to be blue and purple flames across six panes of glass.

Piersee heard about the CARE Gallery from her art teacher at Douglass High School, where she will be a junior in the fall. “She knows how crazy I am about art,” she says. “I’m a big art nerd. I’m so into art that I don’t understand how you can’t be.”

Jasmine Edwards, 14, works on a painting on an old window and window frame. Edwards is a student in a summer art class sponsored by the CARE Gallery in Columbia.

On her window, Piersee plans to paint an introspective picture of a large keyhole, inside of which the viewer will see the back of a woman’s head and her face reflected in a mirror. Piersee’s idea is sketched in black ink on paper.

“Art allows you to go into a whole new world,” she says. “You can escape reality.”

Jasmine Edwards, 14, says she has always been interested in drawing and designing clothes, but she’s excited about learning new art forms this summer. This fall, she will enter ninth grade at Oakland Junior High School. That’s where she learned about CARE.

“When I heard about the art part — getting paid to do art — I thought, ‘OK, now that’s cool!'” Edwards says.

Pat Hart, 14, said he believes being artistic runs in his family. His mother and brother can draw well, and Hart carries a small sketchbook wherever he goes. He wasn’t aware of the CARE Gallery until he went to sign up for the summer program and saw that being paid to make art was one of the available jobs.

“I picked” the CARE Gallery “as my first choice and went home and got a portfolio together,” he says.

He is excited about the summer that lies ahead but apprehensive about working on the Shakespeare’s mural. The students will add details to the painting, which shows three windows looking into the pizzeria, where employees are tossing pies and patrons are enjoying their meals.

“I’m used to making stuff that is small,” Hart says. “But I guess if I mess up, I can paint over it.”

Sarah Paulsen, 25, a University of Missouri-Columbia art graduate from St. Louis, is the CARE Gallery job coach this summer. She recently completed a similar program in St. Louis with Latino youths, but students there were volunteers, not paid employees.

“I wanted to try a program where the kids had to be selected and had some incentive, such as pay,” Paulsen says. “I think it creates more of a commitment from the kids.”