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Beginnings: As with most artists, my life, as I remember
it, has never
been without involvement in art production. Since my brothers were more
athletic, and I had trick knees which went out of joint every time I
tried to
actually use them, I spent most of my childhood reading and drawing.
The
drawings were always done from my mind and I was constantly upset that
I
couldn’t draw them “correctly” or color them in as neatly as some of my
friends,
or even more maddeningly, as well as my older brother. At age six, I quietly discovered how to represent what I saw fairly accurately on paper, and still remember that break-through moment (now labeled “drawing from the right side of the brain”) when I fairly successfully copied a magazine print of a woman dressed in1890’s style clothing. It was so boggling to me that I pulled it off, I ran to show the results to my parents. Their delighted response to that crayon drawing was the beginning of my journey into eventually making art a life-long passion. Youth: We all get our labels growing up, and I was known as the artist and one of the girls who played violin in the school orchestra. Since I failed to actually learn to read music, I played by ear, memorized the pieces, and played well enough to endure junior high. By high school, my deficiencies kept me lagging behind so I finally quit rather than buckle down to work at something I lacked passion for. It was my facility for drawing that really got me the attention I wanted, I loved the process, so I continued drawing stuff I saw as well as stuff out of my imagination. A star in my own mind! Later, in high school, I noticed the art work of another student who sat quietly in a front desk He focused on his work, didn’t visit like the rest of us, and his quality was far beyond anything I’d ever imagined anyone my age could accomplish. I was challenged, and I began to work much harder to compete, possibly just for the sake of my self-designated “super artist” role. As a result, my work improved rapidly, and I explored many new approaches for expression. It’s fun to look back on that now and realize how much that experience shaped my approach to teaching art many years later. The student whose work I admired went on to become a professional artist. College: A time of trying to do something
“worthwhile”, so I dismissed
art in favor of trying to learn something of “value” – like maybe math,
a
subject in which I carried glaring deficiencies – all an attempt to
elevate my
sense of self-worth. I spent a couple of years going “off” to college,
living
on campus, joining a sorority, feeling pointless, and left to attend
the local
university where I took a few more
classes, got good marks, but felt hollow. So I quit altogether and
married my high school sweetheart. I returned to school in Transition to a Career: One child and one divorce later, I had an
adorable mouth to
feed and no occupation so I enrolled at the Teaching Art: Thirty years mixed the joy, enormous humor, and frustration of working with hormone-ridden high-schoolers of all stripes. I re-arranged my curriculum so beginning and advanced students were enrolled in the same classes. That way the older and more experienced students could be role models/mentors for younger students. Instruction was individualized to a great degree so only some of the class would be working together on the same thing at the same time while others were working on agreed-upon goals. I also took additional students in as “independent studies” when classes were too full to add them as regular members. The result was a jammed classroom with an atmosphere of partially controlled chaos. It seemed to work despite the loose structure, and provided what I thought to be a more challenging and creative environment. The work that these kids produced was top-notch, and we earned a reputation in our district for having a good art program which yielded high-quality work. I learned that those students who succeed in
making art
their life are those who combine their talent with drive, passion,
belief in
self, a strong work ethic, and the ability to do the legwork the system
demands. Andrew
Morrison,
a recipient of many scholarships and a graduate of Tufts University,
had all of these qualities as a high school student, and he's making a
very
successful life as an artist. Another talented ex-student , Minu Oh, after
graduating from
the Pasadena Art Center College of Design, is taking time out
being a wife and mother; thus, between changing diapers, has continued
her art career online as a
web designer. So many students have given me the greatest gift I could receive as a teacher: their discovery that they could tap into resources they didn’t know they possessed. It didn’t matter whether they went off to art school or not. It was just the gift of watching the process – when students who took art because they needed an easy elective found they could actually create beautiful pieces of high-quality art. Art and music education are the first to suffer in economic downturns. As I write this, I hear growing horror stories of program cuts, and somewhat selfishly feel that I was lucky to get out before it all started sliding south, but feel badly again that priorities set by the left-brained linear thinkers who rule the world make these programs expendable. Learning the three R’s may help us learn HOW
to
live, but the ARTS are the reason WHY we live. |