Dr. Roy Flurher, Director - Fine Arts Center- Greenville, SC

To understand why there is a Fine Arts Center in the Greenville, South Carolina's public school system, one need only step through the front doors when studio classes are in session. The museum quality building reflects not only professional standards, but professional dreams. Watching these young men and women leaping and turning with elegance and grace; or singing with exuberance; or collaborating on a jazz combo; or editing their written craft, photos, videos, musical recordings, or works of art; and observing the intensity of their efforts and the excellence of their successes, makes it difficult to remember that this is a school day, and that these are high school students.

The Fine Arts Center creates an aura of professionalism through hands-on study with professional artists to enhance their training, raise their expectations, and expand their opportunities. Students learn quickly that in the highly competitive professional art world, inspiration plays a smaller role than perspiration as they work to develop the self-discipline required to succeed. Director, Dr. Roy Flurher, knows more than twenty years of labor and love are their own reward as his students greet him in the halls to report, "I got the scholarship!" or "I got in to Eastman...Julliad...The New School...The University of Chicago..." the list goes on. Each year 800 students from 15 area high schools audition for 400 openings to study art with the pros, while attending academic classes at their home school. The Fine Arts Center offers studio courses in music, art, cinematography, theater, dance, and creative writing.

Flurher ponders his mission as leader of this exemplary school, asking, "How often are we asked to extend ourselves beyond what is comfortable? The arts demand us to take risks. Unless we have the courage to fail – we remain in the comfortable zone of mediocrity." Each student at The Fine Arts Center is asked to step our of that comfort zone, to dig deeper, to look again, to start over, to seek the pattern, or to create a new one. They are asked to constantly turn over the possibilities, test the edges, see something for the first time, try, fail, and try again. These are the principles of creative imagination. "Answer aren’t in the back of the book," explains Flurher, "they're inside the student." Flurer cites the humanist psychologist, Carl Rogers, saying, "The willingness to risk failure is a crucial part of what it means to be creative. You can’t risk, unless there is an atmosphere that permits failure, encourages it, and doesn’t punish students when their ideas fall short. That’s what we do. We create an atmosphere that pushes students to new discoveries and rewards them for reaching and growing. Without failure there can’t be excellence, and excellence is what we expect." According to Flurher, "A man who makes no mistakes, makes nothing." To learn more go to: http://www.fineartscenter.net/