My First Art Class

I won't count the one in first grade.  The one in which I colored the courthouse purple--after which the the teacher walked me to the end of the hall to show me it was "really red." The  one in which the teacher held up my colored mimeographed courthouse to tell the class "not to color hard like Linda."  (She then leaned over my hard-colored one to show me that "light wispy strokes were more ladylike.") When I got a fresh mimeograph to start over,  I painted the red courthouse so light and wispily that it was almost pink.

But wait, there's more: "Color in the lines, Linda.  The lines are there for a reason."

Most of us probably have similar art, music, and word wounds from elementary school days; that was my first and most potent one.   I wonder how many potential talents and curiosities are destroyed in the bud in classrooms.  I saw it every day when I taught writing in college--kids so frozen and shy with fear of mistakes that they loathed writing.

My first actual art class was yesterday's one at at Lyn Belisle's studio: Composition Camp and Transfers.  She opened with a slide show of works she'd made to demonstrate the layers of techniques we'd learn: using graphite paper, ironing on images, and incorporating white tempera paint, watercolor pencils, rubber stamps and stencils.  At the end of the class, we all had a piece matted and ready to frame.  We were asked to name our pictures, tell what we were most proud of and what surprised us most.  What surprised me most is that I managed to make a face!

Lyn uses all kinds of techniques to create her paintings and three-dimensional pieces--and I was inspired to learn them all.  She teaches lightly, encouraging what works, suggesting ways to improve--the essence of good teaching.

When Lyn held up my work today and said something positive about it, I recalled the holding up of my courthouse in first grade and felt a little teary with gratitude.

"You're channeling Anne Morrow Lindbergh," she said--pointing out that my finished piece had a feather and a shell in it.  I hadn't consciously thought of that, but when she pointed it out, I realized that much of what happens on a page is unconscious, one thing leading to another.

"I don't like this horse," one student said--and Lyn showed her ways to work over it.  "It's still in the history of the piece even if you can't see it," Lyn said.

Visual art is like writing that way.  The work that goes into a piece isn't always in the finished product, but it leads to what we want to keep.