Doxa Art Academy

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” ~ Edgar Degas

Anna Bowman’s parents put her in dance class at age 5 because she was such an active child who was “tumbling all over the place,” but little did they know that dance training would start a lifelong love of the art. Bowman, the owner of Doxa Arts Academy in Saline County, is a Bryant native and a graduate of Bryant High school, where she says her favorite classes were always art. 

Married to her high school sweetheart, she says over the course of her life she developed a love for all the arts, and so Doxa Academy was born. “It was my goal to create a place where children could discover their own personal love of the crafts, whether that be music, art, dance, or acrobats,” Anna said. The studio first found a home in Bryant and then moved to its Benton location five years ago.

Anna believes the creation of art through dance, sculpture, or painting, plays a very important role in all the senses, especially vision. “We all know that there are two hemispheres to our brains, one analytical and one creative,” she said, “Obviously we are dominant in one or the other, but to completely ignore one side in favor of the other would create an unbalanced person.” She also believes that every person alive has a measure of this creativity. “Everything the eyes see around us that was made by man’s hands was made through someone’s creativity. The arts can be seen all throughout our culture and is responsible for bringing life and color to our world.“ 

Anna is also the Executive Director of Fostering the Arts, Inc. It was created to meet the needs of foster children in the Saline County area to participate in lessons of the arts. “My first exposure to this particular need was eight years ago, when I reached out to Second Chance Youth Ranch to see if their girls would like a class,” Anna said. 

“The foster mom at the time said she had been praying for this need to be met, so we created a class for just their girls. It was through my work with them that God really opened my eyes to how the arts can help kids in this type of situation. It is therapeutic and can help a child express things through music, dance, and art that can’t be said in words.” 

For the hour these kids are in class, they are just like any other children enjoying an afterschool activity. Anna says it is life-changing, and she has had the privilege to walk with these children through many trials and changes over the eight years that Doxa has served them. “Some kids come back and tell me how much it meant to them to be able to take dance class or to learn an instrument,” she said. 

Historically, classical art instruction has been available only to the elite in society, but the goal of Fostering the Arts is to remove the financial burden so that it is accessible to anyone who would like to participate. They have also expanded the scholarship’s availability from assisting strictly foster children to including those from lower income households as well.

The academy had originally tried to work directly with DHS but found it difficult due to the workload so many DHS caseworkers face. “We have found more success working directly with foster parents and with associations that help foster families, such as Project Zero, The Call, and Second Chance Youth Ranch. I also like to reiterate that Fostering the Arts is an organization completely separate from Doxa Arts Academy,” Anna said. “We want to make sure that students aren’t limited to taking classes with just us. We have provided scholarships to students from several other studios in Central Arkansas and are happy to do so!”

Doxa Arts Academy currently has thirteen instructors and offers a variety of classes, from classical ballet instruction through the internationally-recognized Cecchetti method and the Once Upon a Ballet program for little dancers, to musical theater, tap, and jazz, lyrical/modern/contemporary dance, piano, violin, guitar, voice, homeschool general music, homeschool choir, fine arts instruction in visual arts, and acrobatics through the certified program Acrobatic Arts, which is endorsed by the Cirque du Soleil. The classes are open for children as young as age 2, all the way up to adults. 

“We just really want to share our love of the arts with all our students in a family-friendly setting that makes lessons accessible for anyone,” Anna said. “Think of how bland the world would be without the visual influence of the arts all around us! You need only to open your eyes to see how it enhances our communities.”