Comments on: Artists Weird from Childhood

By: Angela

Angela — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 17:36:25 +0000

No matter how good is your teacher, the best school you go to, if ther crits are doing you good or not… art is something that no matter how much you learn and study, if it is not on you… you will never reach it!

By: Sunil Gangadharan

Sunil Gangadharan — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 20:10:12 +0000

Going by the above standards, I am not that creative…

I used to love doing chemistry experiments when my parents were not looking using chemicals stolen from a friends garage. After I burned myself badly I stopped that creative urge.

By: June

June — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 16:59:54 +0000

AS a very late art student, what I’ve found is that I can absorb only a few things, maybe only one, at a time. I need input and strong input, not coddling — I’m too old for false praise — but only on one aspect — “glaze with ultramarine” or “lay down the black shadows behind the grass first.”

What some art teachers want is for students to absorb everything that they, the teachers, know — it’s a natural impulse and one that feels generous. But the best teachers are very stingy with their information, feeding it slowly to the fingers and minds of the students. I like to think of my art teachers as making me a roux, in which a few bits of flour have to be thoroughly mixed before I can digest any more.

This is radically different from teaching, say, the British novel, where history can get swooped through in great gobs and the students can memorize somethings and get the “feel” for others and do just fine. Teaching art is training the fingers and eye and that takes patience that neither students nor teachers sometimes recognize.

This is not to say I didn’t have the usual off-putting experiences in my youth. I vowed never to take another art class — or do any more sewing for that matter — in 8th grade when my art teacher sneered at my carefully delineated face-on drawing of a Philadelphia historica monument (it was dreadful, but I was trying very hard) and my mother had to finish my apron for home ec because I whined so much. So much for vows.

By: Leslie Holt

Leslie Holt — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 15:21:23 +0000

Birgit,
It is one of my obsessions to never become that art teacher who stomps on the art student’s soul. The climate of constant critique and how could this be better? What’s wrong with it? Excel excel excel can be a real killer on creativity. I am acutely aware of this in the college setting where I am holding students to high standards that may feel arbitrary and foreign to them. I am careful to explain my own biases when evaluating them but i know those formative experiences can be so damaging (even by the time they reach colege). No wonder students get afraid to think for themsleves. Often when they do they are told they didn’t do it “right.” Akin to staying within the lines in the coloring book…

By: Angela

Angela — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 09:59:09 +0000

I was about 18 months when I started scribbling and by 2 and a half I was drawing an image of a fish and snail quite clear.
I grew up with my paintings and drawings always stand out from the rest of the class and being often shown on the walls as classroom decorations.
At 16 I won a Student Art award and when I grew up into an adult I became what I am between so many others…
I always knew what I wanted to do; it was never a choice for me…
I did always have a transcendent imagination for my age, my mum used to ask me what I had to eat in school for lunch when I was 5 and I would simply say: “Soup with Flowers!”

By: birgit Zipser

birgit Zipser — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 00:14:16 +0000

Can I blame my art teacher at high school for not having become an artist sooner?

In my hometown, I won a first prize for a print of an industrial landscape made from carved linoleum. After my teacher told me about my success, she turned to her colleague and loudly said: a blind hen finds a piece of corn.

One of my obsession was to make sure that my children were always in schools with supportive teachers.

By: jenny

jenny — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 23:55:09 +0000

i really want to echo what chantal says.

personally, i fit into those bullets and i remember agreeing with them when i first read genn’s newsletter.

though i’ve never had problems making friends, i think it’s more of a “preference to work autonomously” than being defiant loner, myself. i love community, especially among other artistic souls.

D said -

How is it that a young person will practice the piano 20-30 minutes, nearly everyday and for many years or attend basketball camp and shoot in the backyard for hours, but when you ask them to draw they will shake their heads, discouraged, “I can’t.”

i can tell you that from my experience, it’s because public school systems condition youth how to stop thinking for themselves. i think artistic minds see through this, and why many of them run against the grain growing up. your teacher tells you to answer “xyz” and you quickly “learn” that you better answer that way to get the grade. but when it comes time to draw a picture? anything you want? the student isn’t used to thinking for themselves and wait instruction. thus the, “i can’t.”