Tuition
Unschooled fugitive
journeys in staggers and thrusts
makes radical lien.
I had a Zen type of moment today. The decluttering and all the other normal but stressed out things made me search for a little space where I could clear the mind of all distractions. Deciding to work out a haiku was more time consuming than I remembered, but I did it. Everything comes with a price, cliche, but true. This is my tuition. A little blast from the past, to finally put things back there and lock them away.
I don't often take photos of my desk as there are gifts being made or supplies still in packages. There is just a small space to actually work on and leave pieces to dry, sometimes for days in a row. Maybe because I see it and it is calling out to me, "Get in here and get to work!" that I try to think of all the other things that need doing. I want being at the desk to be a refuge not a burden.
Because I had only one practical art class in college, a required course, I took it during the summer semester so that I could get the misery out of the way as fast as possible. To my unending surprise, the instructor, once he got past the fact that I couldn't draw realistically, was very encouraging. He helped everyone in the class, even me, ahhh the karma of patience.
One day he said he wanted to talk to me, and to go for a walk down the hall. Uh oh. It turned out that he wanted me to sell a pattern to one of his contacts in the city. Just getting into the display case with other patterns was a milestone, but to think it could be valuable, was he kidding? I didn't believe him. He wasn't kidding and was not used to people like me who did not believe in the value of their work. I would have to work this out, my soul did not appreciate what he had said.
In class, I hid behind Abstracts which were easier and more on the surface of my skill level. You didn't have to explain them fully. (Che cosa significa? What does it mean?) Plus, there was a dear older (senior) Italian man, a student, who loved my abstracts, so that helped a lot. ♥♥♥ I haven't thought about him for years, and there he is now front and center in my mind, as plain as day. He's probably up in Heaven right now, painting in Oils.
My high school art teacher despaired as she was of the mindset that if you can't draw, and draw it to look just like a photograph- a realistic depiction, then you can't make art. She wasn't the only teacher who pounded this message, beginning in First Grade. That's why I said "misery" to speed through the summer session.
So, you see, if someone mentioned art, I would be interested, but aloof. One of my good friends got a Masters in Art from a well known art college. All okay for her, she could draw realistically, but during all of the time we spent together, she never expressed that art comes in other forms.
Let me tell you this little story: My friend wanted to make a gift for me of two framed notecards. She showed me a selection of pretty, store bought, embossed cards. I chose the yellow and the gray cards. The colors appealed to me and I thought they looked well together. She delayed, hemmed, and hawed telling me it was a big mistake, a little, okay, a lot of ridicule thrown in just to establish that she was the art major, the one who knew better.
I could not be swayed from my color choice. Yes, she would have felt better if I acceded to her M.A., but then I was left feeling, well, you can imagine. Funny thing is, a short time after she finished the frame, she decided to include the piece in her portfolio for a possible gallery showing. She presented her portfolio and the gallery owner wanted my selection of the yellow and gray cards. Bites. She asked me to lend her the framed piece which was then hanging on my wall, so I handed it over. From that one piece my friend received orders for framed cards. I would never gloat.
I carried the yellow and gray cards for many years from apartment to condo to several houses to storage. Last week I finally dismantled it. It was a reminder to me that sometimes those with more schooling, more experience, etc. don't always know more than the person who is leaning from the heart. To take a chance, especially when you haven't learned all the conventional ways, the conformist ways loaded with biases, can sometimes be the best way, your peace of mind way. But you already know that. I've kept the cards with faded edges to maybe reuse in some new piece of mine. The frame is in the Future Yard Sale Pile.
I'm still learning and experimenting. Blogging has brought more people and their art to me than all the museums and galleries in total that I have ever visited. It helps to see their dreams and passions for their chosen media splashed out across the blogosphere. Bright, gloomy, day glo, sepia, and everything else, whatever they make is another day in paradise, well, sort of. Here's to all the artists and the artists at heart!
This is my tuition. What's yours?
