Feb 16 2009
Ode to Art Class
Show me another time in school when you can spend hours and hours looking at a single piece of paper, with nothing but a brush in your hand and paint spread around you. When the teacher put classical music on, and you could feel yourself slide away from every other part of life for an hour or two. Where you can get messy with clay in your fingernails, or fingerpaint colors squishing into the sleeves of your shirt, or colored chalk marks on your cheeks while, or all of these on your shirt, and no one gets mad. Where your dad is willing to let you have an old ripped shirt of his so that you have a “painting shirt.”
Yes, art class is a time of concentration, relaxation, focus, and dreaming. It’s exploring–can you really use chalk to make something besides a still life? Yes, you can!–and the exploring helps you discover what you love about the world, what you find interesting, what you detest. It can be done in absolute silence, though only a few would object if you hum while you work. (I personally hum when I paint. I hum even when I color in a coloring book with my kids. I sometimes hum while eating, if I’m nervous. Just ask my hubby.)
Do you remember art class? Remember the teacher who was just a shade shy of abnormal, who loved everybody’s work, who gave whacked-out assignments using colors, shading, and perspective, and who said to every single student, at one time or another, “Wow! You are a real artist”? I had a bunch of those… and though I didn’t take art in college, I never forgot my art teachers. And their influence made certain I never forgot art, either.
So now I have my own art class… still, after all these years… and it’s filled with art paper, a collapsable easel, acrylic paints, pastels, charcoals, watercolors, everything I need to make myself happy. And every once in a while, I take them out, pick an afternoon to relax, make sure the sun is streaming in through the windows, and go back to art class.
I need to visit there more often. And so do you. Start small. Buy yourself an $8 box of pastels and some colored paper. Turn on some great music. And get drawing. And if you have old art supplies, dig them out of the garage and get to it. Hum while you work, if you can stand it. Let your kids join in. My kids have had “art class” for their whole lives. As soon as they could hold a brush, they’ve been painting, even if all they end up doing is mixing the watercolors into a sort of pinkish brown. But with each class they get better. Last summer, they had art class nearly every day. They loved it. I loved it. It brought me back to those art class days, and brought my creativity out in entirely new ways.
And, just like that art teacher, once you’ve done what you wanted for the day, once the sun is going down, and you know the class is over, at least for the day, look at your finished product and declare, “Well, my word, you are a real artist!”
In grade school we were given manila paper and crayons and a weekly art teacher would have us make seasonal drawings. I loved that weekly class. After that, though, I never had another art class until I was an adult. My career revolved around science–teaching, taking advanced science classes, etc. One year I just felt burned out with science. I needed something completely different. I signed up for a beginner’s sketching class. at a local college.
I’ll never forget the doors that our instructor, Randy Wolferding, opened for me. She based the 8-week class on a book by Betty Edwards, “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.”
No, I never went on to be an artist but I was able to incorporate some of Edward’s drawing techniques in my classes with a short term on scientific illustration. Students that hated science found something to enjoy, and those who liked science class found, like I did, that drawing expanded our way of thinking, of seeing the world.
Thank heaven for art teachers.
aw
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That is simply AWFUL, Stephanie. Horrible. I don’t know what I would have done without art class. I remember one girl in there when I was in high school. Her parents thought she was doing too much in school, and so, rather than take her out of cheerleading (she hated it), they pulled her from art class. It devastated her.
It would have devastated me, too. How awful.
I’m my daughter’s 2nd grade class’s art docent, which means a few times a year I come in and do a whole project with them. We are doing one next Wednesday, and I can’t wait.
I agree, aw2500–Thank heaven for them. And may they live long and prosper… for our children will be happier for having come in contact with them.