Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 55

oFOGl GOOD Garden, 3-D Ann Landers, 4-D Movies, 4-D Television, 7-D section SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26. 1987 0 ST. PETERSBURG TIMES LIFE IN THE 30s i nnnn Glimpse of Florida art refreshes quinoiEn The beauty of pageants isn't beauty Center Art Show, 123 works by 77 arttttt at Bayboro Hal, University of South Florida's St Petersburg campus, 140 Seventh Ave. S. Today: 10 a.m.-S p.m.; Sunday: 11 a m.

-4 m. Free. By MARY ANN MARGER ST. PETERSBURG The Center Art Show makes its brief annual appearance this weekend, as fresh, bold and short-lived as a mountain flower. The show, the major fund-raiser for the Arts Center at the University of South Florida's St.

Petersburg REVIEW campus, is a time to get out and see what Florida artists have been doing all summer. From this exhibit, it's obvious the sweltering heat doesn't curb art '1 TilJvf a 1 J. W08M TV, BoMon The students that populate Degrassi Junior High are actually members of a Canada-based repertory company. the creative flow. It isn't just that there are new artists; the familiar ones continue to offer fresh approaches to their work.

Shirley Frank evolves into a unique and mature style in her acrylic painting Stones with Secrets, which won first prize. In it, a cemetery is subtly veiled in fragments of color, vibrant with life despite its subject. Popular Sarasota artist Robert O. Hod-gell presents two nautical watercolors, a change from his better-known slab ceramic sculptures and linocuts. He has, through the years, produced acrylics and watercolors, but seldom resulting in a pair so appealing as those on display.

Even in the small and airy watercolors by Elinor Kreinheder, Tom Dewberry and Grace Roth, there is a feeling of rejuvenation. Although there are many excellent artists missing Jim Michaels, Judith Powers-Jones, Craig Rubadoux, the entire USF art faculty their omission is adequately compensated by the lesser-knowns and up-and-comers. Generally, the works show a mastery of technique and a boldness of spirit. In fact, Alan B. DuBois, former assistant director of the St.

Petersburg Museum of Please see ART 5-0 "BUM ass df So there I was on Saturday night, with my pencil, my paper and my pint of Fantastic Mash ice cream. "Miss California is pretty," I called to my husband in the kitchen. "Oh my God," he replied. "Not this again." I am the world's greatest living expert on beauty pageants. This is my special talent.

It's not much, but let's face it. it's better than clog dancing or reciting a dramatic monologue from The Crucible. I always believe it keeps me in touch with popular culture, not to mention the sequin and hand-beading industries. I knew within the first hour last year that Miss Tennessee would be named Miss America, and I'm willing to reveal my secret. She spells her first name Kellye with an at the end.

Dead giveaway. On the other hand, I went out on a limb for Vanessa Williams. 1 picked her on looks alone. Miss Americas are not chosen on the basis of looks. They are chosen on the basis of what America represents.

This year, America was represented by teased hair, strapless gowns and the Constitution: a return to old-fashioned values. A friend once gave me a good talking-to about this. "Why do you want to watch scantily clad women making fools of themselves?" she said. "It's better than Monday Sight Football," 1 replied. Besides, why shouldn't I watch women make fxls of thetnsolves publicly once or twice a year, pretending to be talented, sincere and natural so that they can be famous, when the rest of the time 1 get to watch men do the same thing during presidential press conferences and network news specials? The fact is, I have no good reason to watch beauty pageants.

It's not because I identify. It has become traditional for beauty contestants to say. with sincerity so strong that they appear to be having an out-of-body experience, that they have wanted to win ever since they were little girls with bath towels slung around their shoulders and a broom handle scepter in their little hands. It has also become traditional for them to glue down their bathing suits so they don't ride up. I've never done either of these things.

When I was a little girl, I never dreamed of being Miss America; I wanted to be the Princess of Wales. And if my bathing suit rides up, I just pull it down. Miss Michigan won the Miss America pageant this year. I blew it. She doesn't want to go into communications or inspirational speaking or become a network an-chorwoman.

She's a nurse, and she wants to stay a nurse. How could I be expected to choose her? Please see BEAUTY 5-D 'Degrassi Junior High' teaches the rest of television a lesson DegratM Junior High premwret tonight on WEDU-Ch. 3 at 8 p.m. By JANIS 0. FROELICH TVwi TiltuHion Cute IXJ-ruGoL-T school.

But because he's a seventh grader and a chubby nerd, she disclaims any biological link to him. She tells him flatly not to talk to her at school. Arthur ends up being a source of strength, and she confesses needing him at the conclusion. Try getting this lesson of being nice to one's sibling across in a lecture to a teen-ager and you'll get one of those glazed-over expressions. Degrassi brings the sister-brother relationship to a respectful stage while showing Stephanie's pettiness and meanness.

Don't get the impression, though, that the episodes are wonderfully packaged so that each week there's a huggy-kissy ending. As co-producer Taylor says, "It is deliberately not a Hollywood version of well-dressed, well-adjusted teen-agers processing their feelings with articulate and forthcoming parents." The only hitch with this wonderful series may well be where it's being aired. How many teens tune in PBS? My kids haven't since Sesame Street toy. The producers, of course, are aware of this and have made a concerted effort to publicize Degrassi Junior High. A copy of a discussion and activity guide for the first 13 programs was mailed in August to all middle and junior high schools.

Additional copies are available for $2 per guide from Degrassi Junior High Discussion and Activity Guide, Box 2222-DG, South Easton. Mass. 02375. 'vK VP t's been a few years since I've 1 thought about stuffing a 7th grad-t er in a locker, but the horrors and I humor of adolescence came back vividly while watching the new PBS series Degrassi Junior High. If I were to pin a gold star on any new show this fall season, it would be this one.

Degrassi Junior High revived the emotions of my youth so strongly that I could smell Clearasil during the viewing. Executive producers are Kate Taylor and Linda Schuyler, both former junior high teachers. The ensemble cast of Degrassi Junior High is a Canada-based repertory company of about 50 teens who, the producers say, save them "from being too didactic, too young or old, or just not entertaining enough." Degrassi Junior High had me laughing out loud because of its funny frankness, but consider the list of serious subjects the series is addressing: self-image, peer pressure, friendship, sexuality, family relationships, lying, alcohol, drugs, smoking, dating, stereotypes, child abuse, maturity and death. Like wow, as my 14-year-old daughter would say. By the way, since I've brought home two taped episodes of Degrassi Junior High, she has watched them each about three times on the VCR.

She sits there having this dialogue with the TV. When one of the girls is whistled at, my daughter says, "Oh, I hate when guys do that." She's related so strongly to the realism of Degrassi that she's even offered criticism of what the kids are wearing. Tonight's premiere is about a school election, but the program gets into moral values without being preachy. That is the strength of Degrassi, and that is why kids will watch it addictively. For example, Stephanie and her younger brother Arthur go to the same Time photo JOC WALU8 MC001, a work at the Center Art Show by Lakeland artist Gary Gessford.

SATURDAY FICTION Contest By Deborah Miller ell you point-blank, between the kid and the runway and Miss Ginger Logan, 5 o'clock cannot come fast enough. I am sitting here in says, after he swallows the eggs, "Yes, Miss Ginger." The kid is 5 and small for the chair, the sides and high top along the back of it framing him there like a kid in a family album. For the second or third time since we came down to breakfast, he lays the side of his fork against the side of the sausage and pushes hard, knuckles going white. What happens is not a bite-size piece of meat, but the sausage on the floor. Not the first one in the morning, either.

Fork and knife in hand, I lean my way over to the kid's plate and say, "Here. Let me, honey." "Uh-uh-uh," says Miss Ginger, blocking the silverware with her coffee cup. "Right," I say, bringing the fork and knife back home by my plate. "Forgot." I check my watch 9:30. "William," Miss Ginger says, handing Please see CONTEST 2-D the main conference room of the MountainTop Inn watching the kid work on his scrambled eggs and sausage.

Miss Ginger Logan is with us at the table right now with the hot-pink packet of Sweet 'n Low, ripping into it and giving some to her coffee, black, and the rest to her grapefruit, also pink, but a fairer shade than the Sweet 'n Low packet she has just emptied out and placed inside the ashtray. My back is to the runway. Miss Ginger Logan and the kid sit across from me, facing it. She points with a juicy spoonful of grapefruit in our direction, the runway's and mine, and she says to the kid, "Bigger than the one at the last place, huh, sugar?" and he VCV This story has been made possible by the PEN American Center in cooperation with the Literature program of the National Endowment for the Arts TlmM art TRICH REDMAN.