Secret life of the artist, Chapter 4

OK, so you've been reading this blog and you haven't seen "Secret life of the artist, Chapter 1, 2 or 3, so what's going on? I thought I'd give myself a little room for previous entries and start a little later. Besides 4 is a much funnier number than 1. So my thoughts today are about the influence of school, not art school, upon the young artist. I went to public school and while I don't particularly remember any art on the walls of grade school, there was quite a bit in high school. I remember a large oil, probably 30 X 36" under glass (to keep us grubby little kids from touching it. This was a landscape of woods, trees leaves on a cloudy day. I can see it now all these many years later there on the wall of the third floor hallway and how I used to stand by it while I waited for my next class. How often I looked at it and wondered what it would take to do something like that. I never saw anone else but me connecting with an artist and their work -- I don't know who did it, but it sure caught my attention. Another painting was a winter scene of snow piled inches thich on a bridge railing with the sun shining on it. That wa in the science classroom -- and how I looked at it while I should have been paying attention. Oh, I didn't have ADHD, I did my lessons well -- I just saw another life out there for me -- at least I hoped so. Then there was art class and all the disasters I committed there. Well, one couldn't expect a lot from the lame assignments we were given. Some were good, but most were not. It was my first life drawing experience -- and I found out that I could really do it. Then there was the "make a fish out of paper" assignment. What an embarassing mess I created and had to look at it among the others hung from the ceiling. You'll never know how I wanted to take a match to it and watch it burn. I went right into the garbage can when I got it back. Years later when I worked for a college, I was sent back to my old high school to evaluate the appropriateness of the learning environment (or some such nonsense as that). I got to go back and see the school as it is now. There on the third floor hallway, the painting I loved --- it was gone. No more art on the walls. What happened that a kid can't make a connection to the art world in an everyday place without paying some outrageous Museum fee. Maybe that's one reason I was a Waldorf teacher -- I did art for kids for eight years and eventually entered more deeply into the art world. So....enough musing..... the picture I have posted is of me in the background and my buddy Jack with the mustache painting in art school. I only have a couple photos of actual working at the school and i'ts fun to look back.