L. B. Johnson welcomed VISTA Volunteers, December 12, 1964, by saying, "Your pay will be low; the conditions of your labor often will be difficult. But you will have the satisfaction of leading a great national effort and you will have the ultimate reward which comes to those who serve their fellow man." VISTA stories are not about rocket science; they are about an organ of human life. My VISTA story tells about people. Government officials, business administrators, teachers, literacy students and artists helping to develop literacy projects.

Henry Mercer studied with Harvard's first art historian, Charles Norton. Mercer idealized the pre-industrialized culture of handmade crafts and goods and argued, "the only way to understand people of an earlier era was through their arts and artifacts." Mercer helped define America's shared past by collecting pre-industrial tools. In retrospect, Henry Mercer discovered, "art needs the touch of a human hand." Henry Mercer makes more sense as time goes on. We are the instruments of art.

How do we integrate art into our lifestyles and careers? Art lacks a significant presence in our schools and daily life. Most people do not have a basic understanding and hands on approach with art. Dad's response was do you make money with art. Art helps us to understand our self so we can understand society and the world to make healthy choices. People who study art know the purpose of art.

My college study was art and business. In 1990, I pursed Volunteers in Service to America, VISTA, and a host organization to develop learning facilities in Western Kentucky. With ten years in design, space planning and project management experience in construction the skills fit the requirements for the VISTA and the Kentucky Literacy Council project. My commitment to art and business complimented the professional skills needed to fulfill the project description.

Throughout my career, I used visual art as a communicator of expression, information and ideas in business and personal projects. We learn more with visual art mediums than audible or kinetic teaching styles. During VISTA training in Columbus, Ohio, VISTA corroborated my assumptions about visual art mediums. VISTA recognized visual art mediums are more effective than audible or kinetic teaching styles for delivery of information. Like my daughter, we are sponges of the visual, audible and kinetic information world.

Visual art projects cross gender, social, economic and cultural boundaries allowing us to experience the sameness of being human. In 1898, Leo Tolstoy a Russian writer was asked, what is art? "Art is not a pleasure, or amusement; art is a great matter. Art is an organ of human life transmitting man's reasonable perception into feeling." The visual art projects connected us in the process of making, viewing, administrating and talking about Literacy projects.

The VISTA hosts organization, Longfellow Adult Learning Center, integrated visual art into the literacy projects. We acquired county government funding for learning cubicles using visual presentations. We acquired advertising funding to do a statewide computer generated student publication. We solicited visual artists to contribute artworks for student achievement awards. We developed off-site learning facilities with community at risk organizations. We sponsored visual art exhibitions and talks for local artists at the adult learning center. In retrospect, the VISTA term help to develop learning facilities with the aid of visual art projects at an adult learning center and community at risk organizations in Owensboro, Kentucky. We discovered art needs the touch of many different hands and we are the instruments of visual art. Look around at everything you own manmade in totality as a composition, it is a reflection of self an organ of human life.