Art for All
The man behind Monart is on a mission.
Charles Baughman moves a ballpoint pen across a canvas as he sketches my portrait. He does so without looking at the paper, as an exercise called blind contouring that’s designed to help artists develop better hand-eye coordination. The drawing isn’t perfect, but it’s impressive for a 10-second blind rendition.
We sit in a schoolroom at Monart School of the Arts, where Baughman teaches what he believes about art—that anyone can learn the craft with a little structure. “You wouldn’t give a kid a piano and say, ‘go play,’” he says. “But we give kids crayons and say, ‘Go draw,’ all the time.” Baughman and his wife, Kate Pepper, opened the school four years ago to offer a teaching method that makes art education accessible for all ages and skill levels. Together, they create a supportive atmosphere for art students to flourish. “We never comment, good or bad,” he says. “We really care about the students and seeing that they develop their own style and sense of self-confidence.”
To Baughman, art is more than colors and canvas. As a child with dyslexia and ADHD, it was a means of escape. In second grade he drew a tree on the back of a failed test. He ran home to show his mom and, in his excitement, he forgot about the grade on the front of his masterpiece. “That’s when I realized I could get lost in art,” he says. “It took away the pain of other things.”
The Omaha, Nebraska native went on to attend Kearney State College in Kearney, Nebraska. At first, Baughman believed art was about attempting to recreate reality. “I was the human Xerox machine,” he says. While in one college art class, however, that all changed when he spilled a can of Pepsi on one of his meticulous drawings. To his surprise, the professor praised the soda-stained art for its abstract creativity. “It was the biggest art moment of my life,” he says.
Baughman moved to Wichita in 1993 and earned a master of fine arts degree at Wichita State University. He went on to work as a contractor, gardener and handyman while teaching art at local colleges. Then, in 2003, he heard about Monart, an art instruction method that teaches students to break images into basic shapes and to reassemble the parts. Mona Brookes, the method’s founder, trained Baughman in California, and he bought the Wichita franchise the next year. Alongside the school, he continues to create his own work. He’s sold hundreds of his own pieces, which showcase objects in vibrant colors with an abstract flavor, all over the United States.
In 2004, he and his wife purchased the former St. Alban’s church in northeast Wichita and converted it into the Monart School of the Arts. Today, the picturesque building provides a serene learning environment for more than 300 students. They go there to learn about world cultures, famous artists, art history and more while sketching, painting and sculpting. The school also regularly hosts art shows.
Besides working at the Monart School of the Arts, Baughman teaches on Thursdays at Chisholm Life Skills Center and leads other programs like summer camps, classes at the zoo and themed sessions in Newton. He also hopes to expand Monart’s programs with the help of his wife. “It’s a family and a team,” says Baughman. “I’m really blessed to be a part of it.”
