Her blond dreadlocks stood out in a room of dark-haired young women who waited for her direction. Wearing an apron stained with paint, Ventura muralist MB Hanrahan instructed 11 young women to grab their brushes, mix paint in small plastic-foam cups and get ready to work.

Instead of finding a blank wall to paint outside, however, the young women — wards in the Ventura County juvenile justice facility in El Rio — took their materials back to their tables, where they started to paint large, wooden boards cut like puzzle pieces.

Every Saturday for several months, Hanrahan has been working side by side with young female and male wards, who are also students at the facility's Providence School.

"I came to the school one morning and showed them slides, and they drew," Hanrahan said. "We were given the theme making changes takes effort.' There were so many ideas, I didn't feel like cramming it into one big mural, so we are doing three smaller murals and came up with the compositions."

The Saturday art program is a collaboration of Providence School, the Ventura County Probation Agency and the Ventura County Arts Council, which received a grant to have artists like Hanrahan provide lessons to students.

"We are working with them to focus on positive things and give them a creative outlet for their energy," said Margaret Travers, Arts Council executive director.

Travers said Hanrahan is the first of many artists and musicians the council hopes to bring to the juvenile facility, thanks to a $30,000 grant from the California Arts Council, Ventura County Office of Education and the Martin and Martha Smith Foundation. Plans are also in the works for guitar, drumming and choral lessons, Travers said.

"It is a community safety issue that we see these young people get their lives back on a good track," Travers said. "Many of them never had the opportunity for self-expression, and sometimes they have emotions that are bottled up and it comes out the wrong way.

"We don't excuse what they have done in the past, but we also want them to have better ideas of what they can do once they get back home."

Hanrahan and a group of male wards already had finished two sections of the puzzle-piece mural. On a recent Saturday, the female students worked on the other portion.

Using mixtures of various colors, the young women carefully filled in outlined letters and figures of people's smiling faces. The portion of the mural depicts young people walking up stairs, and underneath each step are words that spell "effort."

Floating across the sky in bright, colorful letters is the phrase, "Change will make you a better person," while a flying key contains the words, "Knowledge is freedom."

The mural pieces completed by the female and male wards will be pieced together and displayed somewhere in the facility, said Probation Officer Jennifer Weiler.

Working with Hanrahan has been a positive experience, said one of the female wards.

"Typically on Saturdays, we just sit around and watch movies," said G.B., a 16-year-old female student whose full name is not being used because she is a minor. "Now we get to do stuff that we actually want to do, instead of just sitting all day. It helps pass the time and it's painting. Who doesn't like to paint?"

The mural, "has a good theme, because I think it applies to all of us and our situation," G.B. said.

Every weekend, volunteers visit students and bring interesting lessons, from drumming to Polynesian dancing, Weiler said.

"A lot of these girls come from different neighborhoods, and maybe out on the streets, they won't get along," Weiler said. "However, it's nice to see them come together as one and work together for one big effort, and I think the girls enjoy that."

Having the opportunity to work with a professional artist who is "fun" is a bonus, said 16-year-old K.T.

"I think it's cool that we are doing this for our community and I think it's cool it will be here so everyone can see it," K.T. said while filling in the "effort" portion of the mural. "We are all getting together and communicating with each other and not arguing."

Hanrahan said she also learns from teaching others her craft.

"This is a class in community art making," Hanrahan said. "I think what I get the most out of it is trying to be an example, for me and other artists who take on the challenge to work with populations ... that average artists are not used to working with."