One of my strongest sources of joy and heartache in teaching high school art is a class called Special Art Production. It sounds like art for special needs students mixed with factory work, but it is actually just an independent study class for art students who have already taken several art classes and are ready to try their hand at developing their own art projects. Of course I tell my special art production students- or SAP students as I usually call them- that their job is to work me out of a job. “Mr. Kelly will not be your art teacher after this class, so you will need to know how to make these choices for yourself, and I want to see you feel confident about making art in the future.” I tell them this, then I hover around them to make knowing glances at “good” decisions, or to furrow my brow and nod slowly at their work, or, when I can’t help myself, to jab questions at them. This was my mode of operation the other day when I was working with a student that I will call Mary. Mary is eighteen, a senior, and she would be a 4.0 student, if not for the interruptions in her education. When I worked with Mary last year as a drawing and painting teacher, I noticed her talent, smarts, and great work ethic right away. And then days would go by where she would not show for class. She finally shared with me that her older brother had been battling cancer off and on for sometime. When she was absent, she was staying home to get him to appointments and to care for him. She eventually dropped out of school for a semester to work full time to pay for Chemo treatments- her family had lost health insurance- and returned when her brother had died. So now, Mary is just starting this process of planning and making “independent” high school art. She has started with a photo composite project that is heavily influenced by David Hockney. This is okay with me, really. Copying the process of an established artist is a great way for young art students to get their feet wet. They may not be swimming yet, but whatever. Mary started by laying a full sheet of mat board on the table, opened a photo envelope from Wal-Mart, and without any gluing yet, she started to piece together a composition. Before too long, I was hovering enough to notice her holding two photos with a frustrated expression on her face. Her very horizontal composition was running up against the edges of the mat board, and she could not fit these two photos in that she really wanted to use. I could hold it in no longer. “Mary, what are you doing?!” I caught my breath and continued, “First, you laid out this mat board. Right away you are letting the company who made this mat board this size decide how your project will look. Second, you let Wal-Mart decide that all of your pictures would be 4”X6” rectangles. Did you make a rule for yourself that you could not cut the photos? Did you make the conscience decision that they had to stay rectangles? Why not lay everything out on the table the way you want and then figure out how to mount them.” I was a little worried by the shocked expression on Mary’s face, but then a look of recognition came to her. How long had it been since she felt in charge of her decisions? How long had she been in survival mode, just doing what it takes to get by? Sure, she has been told for quite a while that she is artistically talented, but how far has that gotten her with life pushing her around so much. Has she ever really pushed back?
I do not really know how much Mary has thought about this day in class, but I have been thinking about it a lot. As artists we hear that art is about expression, or that art is about beauty, or that art is about some spiritual connection. No wonder artist statements can sound so loopy, flowery, or foggy. In the end, art is about making decisions. It is about controlling some part of a chaotic or oppressive world. We need projects that physically remind us that we have a will, that we can exercise it. I thought about that episode in SAP class this morning as I was convincing myself that it was worth rolling out of bed early. I had to get to my studio and get to work.
Please visit my work at kevinpkellyart.artspan.com
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