Don’t Kill the Dream
I can’t say I was ever particularly fond of school. Give me a good window to look out of and I can almost survive. As far as I can remember, the highlights of my elementary school career were being on the safety patrol and given the assignment of beating the chalk off the erasers. Yes, those were two prized positions to have. Who didn’t love the safety patrol badge and belt? And our lungs? Hey what’s a little chalk dust when it gets you out onto the playground.
There was always recess to look forward to, where we played dodge ball, hung upside down from the jungle gym, or jumped rope. I spent way too much time turning the rope, due to my inability to jump. Our academic classes were interspersed with gym, music, and art. Gym was awful. We had to meet certain USA requirements. I never did. Climbing ropes? Was I a monkey? Also, our gym teacher was a sadist—and later fired for it! I think we can conclude that most gym teachers are sadists, at least to those of us put on the D teams.
Art. I still remember our art teacher’s name. Mr. Shubert. He was a very nice, mild-mannered man, but he never recognized my talent. I had the distinct impression he thought I didn’t have any.
Do they still have parents’ night at schools? Where the kids have their work displayed? Somehow my art never made it up there, hanging with tacks from the wooden board that ran along the classroom walls. My writing never made it either because I’ve always had terrible handwriting, never got above a C and a “needs improvement.” They must have put something of mine up. I was always a diligent student. It couldn’t have been math. Even in my old age, I’ve never seen the point. I can remember being at a dinner party with engineers and one of them said, “Can anyone imagine living without math?” I replied, “I’ve done it all my life.” True, it makes comparative shopping and playing canasta difficult, but I persevere.
But back to Mr. Shubert and his, I won’t call it disdain but, confusion about my “art.” Because of his discouraging reaction to my efforts, I left school with the impression that art and I had nothing to say to one another.
Flash forward way too many years and I discovered Snow Farm. I had seen a floor cloth at the beautiful Milwaukee Museum of Art and decided I wanted to make one. Where in the world could I learn how? Up popped Snow Farm in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, on my search engine. I think it was the only time they offered that course.
I told my sister about it, a whole week away doing art. We could kill two birds with one stone, see my mother in Nanuet and then drive up to Massachusetts together. And so we did.
It was a wonderful week, one we repeated for many years until there was no reason to return to Nanuet, especially for me. It’s a long haul from Chicago to Massachusetts, through “scenic” Indiana with a toll road that could never read my I-Pass.
While at Snow Farm, my sister and I mostly chose different courses. She liked pottery, weaving and stained glass. I preferred monoprints, fabric arts, fused glass, where for some reason I became known as the “kiln hog.” We took enameling, paper arts and watercolor together. Mr. Shubert would have approved of my sister’s work. Mine? Too outre?
Like writing, art releases the mind to go its own way. There are no boundaries, no lines within which to color. It’s joyful and life-giving, which makes it so sad that too many schools no longer have a period devoted to art. From finger-painting to play doh to the creative world beyond, the hands work their own magic on the mind, telling it to relax, to mediate, to create. Everyone has her or his own vision. Art teachers everywhere, don’t kill the dream.