There were signs in his childhood: He liked to draw, was always trying to make something, and created weird sculptures instead of bridges with his Erector Set.

“Growing up, my mother saw something in me that she decided needed to be nurtured and cultivated,” said Rick Jones whose mom began taking him to Saturday morning art classes at the Dayton Art Institute when he was 8 years old.

“These classes gave me the opportunity to eventually discover my passion for the arts,” he said. “I continued going well into high school and by then I knew I would somehow make a life in the arts.”

That “life in the arts” has turned out to be as an arts administrator. After obtaining two degrees in painting and teaching visual arts at Ohio and Missouri colleges, Jones found his calling as a community arts leader. Since 1991, he’s been the executive director of the Fitton Center for the Creative Arts in Hamilton.

The Center, which serves 60,000 people in Butler County, regularly offers programs ranging from yoga and belly-dancing to pottery and tap dancing. It houses galleries, a theater, studios, classrooms, offices and a 3,800-square-foot ballroom.

“Since 1978, my professional life has revolved around creating access to quality hands-on and mind-on involvement in the arts for every member of a community,” said Jones, who received the Ohio Governor’s Award for Arts Administration in 1991.

During his tenure, the Fitton Center’s budget has grown tenfold, its membership has tripled, and annual support in grants, gifts, and sponsorships has increased 800 percent. Jones has authored two books as basic guides for community volunteers to create arts centers in their community.

“I feel a deep sense of pride as I watch the joy on children’s faces,” he said. “Sometimes with certain kids, I can’t help but wonder how the experience they are having momentarily removes them from an unhealthy home life.”

He also feels joy when he watches adults enjoy or be challenged by a performance or exhibition.

“I occasionally think about the impact we have not only on individual lives, but the community as a whole,” he said. “Are businesses doing better when we have a performance? Do the City officials truly recognize what we add to economic development, being a part of the solution to social inequities, improving the quality of life in Hamilton? Do people realize the impact we’ve had nationally on arts education and research?”

We asked Rick Jones about his lifelong involvement with the arts and the part it plays in his life and the lives of others:

Q: In what ways do you think the arts can impact our lives?

A: I try to never fault people for not “getting” the arts. To me, it’s perfectly understandable why a person without some in-depth knowledge wouldn’t “get” a Mark Rothko painting or an Alexander Calder sculpture or a Harold Pinter play or a Wagner requiem.

But quality arts programming available to all citizens has both intrinsic and extrinsic benefits. Intrinsic benefits would include the impact participating in an arts experience has on us personally. For example, a poem or great novel can transport us to another time or another place or help us to see a situation or event more clearly. Music can deepen or broaden an emotional experience. A great painting can show us something of beauty in an otherwise unnoticed part of everyday life or in the case of Rothko, eliminate all but color to show us the power of color relationships. These are among the intrinsic benefits of the arts.

And, of course, direct participation in the arts such as playing an instrument, making a watercolor painting, carving or building a sculpture and the like produce the most relative intrinsic benefits like expanding self-awareness, connecting our thoughts and innermost feelings, expressing emotions, and so on.

Extrinsic benefits — those that can sometimes go even more unnoticed by the average person but have an even broader impact, are those benefits that collectively contribute to a community’s quality of life. These include economic impact, helping students be more successful in school, solving social problems and creating a more culturally vibrant community.

Q: How do you envision a perfect day that would incorporate the arts?

A: Whether they realize it or not, almost everyone has an arts-related experience every day of their life. For example, if you listened to any form of music, you’ve had an arts experience. If you decided that you’re wearing certain colors, patterns, or shades of light or dark together in your clothing today, you made an artistic choice. Does it make any difference at all to you what color of car you purchase? Another aesthetic decision. This can extend to the design of a home, how you plan your landscaping, the design of your dress, shirt or shoes.

And the list of artistic, design or aesthetic decisions you make each day goes on. But, even with these many artistic decisions, people still need to make a conscious choice to experience the arts. Maybe that ‘perfect’ day ‘incorporating the arts’ includes taking an art or music or dance class, attending a play or concert, reading a novel, playing an instrument, singing in a choir, making a basket, ad infinitum.

Q: What advice would you give to parents and grandparents who want to interest their children in the arts?

A: Children are already interested in the arts. Have you ever seen a child write, do math or even talk before they were drawing, sculpting, dancing or singing? We all begin life as artists because children hear the message from their DNA telling them to respond to their environment in color, rhythm, movement, symbol, mime, etc. Children are already graduated to the arts.

Our responsibility as adults is to find ways for them to release the arts. Parents and grandparents must take responsibility for this. As we saw most recently, the Lakota schools gutted their arts and music program to save money. This has long been the generic response to a school’s budget crisis — cut the “non-essentials” — music and art. Why do school officials, and sadly many parents, consider arts and music nonessential? As we continue to build math and science programs in the schools while cutting the arts, we should expect students to learn to respond to their world with the fervor of a robot.

Q: Who are your favorite artists?

A: I’ll just mention a few painters and sculptors that influenced my work back when I was painting. I still consider them my favorites to this day: Paul Cezanne, Vincent Van Gogh, Phillip Pearlstein, Mark Rothko, Hans Hoffman, Josef Albers, Willem de Kooning. Sculptors I favor are Claes Oldenberg, Auguste Rodin, Henry Moore, Alexander Calder and Michelangelo. You can tell I’m a product of a Eurocentric arts education. Certainly, I appreciate the sculptures of places like Africa, Italy, Greece, Egypt and more.

Q: What’s on your bucket list — both in terms of the arts and in general?

A: I don’t make lists too often — including a ‘bucket’ list. They’re too confining and don’t leave room for enough joy and whimsy for me. Flexibility keeps things in our life from breaking.

That aside, my hope is that someday Hamilton will truly be a culturally vibrant community. It’s making progress in that direction with the Fitton Center launching the effort 20 years ago and now with Hamilton the home of Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park & Museum, the City of Sculpture, the just opening Butler Tech School for the Arts, and soon to be Artspace (live-work apartments and studios for artists).

In addition, the Hamilton-Fairfield Symphony Orchestra has grown in size and quality and Greater Hamilton Civic Theatre recently invested in an old downtown theatre as rehearsal and storage space. So, as you can see, Hamilton is moving toward cultural vibrancy.