In the place I have in my home where I pray each morning, there is an image taped to the wall from Art in America of two boxers in a ring with the referee and the crowd leaning in,yelling their heads off. It is by George Bellows, and because I trimmed it from a magazine , I don't know the title. What is important to know is why I have this image in a place that I see each morning.
The first answer is ; it is about the internal struggle, the internal spiritual battle. More deeply, it is about the fight that is for my creative life each day . Creativity is in my access.This is not a reference to the romantic ideal of conjuring a creative ecstasis. That is for another entry. I want to talk about the fight with any number of opponents as an artist and art educator.
As an artist, I feel as though I am consistently on the threshold of understanding and knowledge about an idea , material or process. I would hope to always remain here; uneasy, unsteady and not knowing where the next turn is until I have taken it. The gloves go on in the studio when I become comfortable. The battle is then with conventions I have set up for myself that once were products of experimentation. In the studio, I become both trainer and boxer. My opponent is my ego. The battle is universal and so personal. It comes to the question for whom do I work? My work in the studio is for the manifestation creative glory of God. To do this I must step aside or at some points push myself aside.
The same sort of battle is in the studio classroom. The art practice within the studio classroom is much more about the students then it is ever about the teacher.The rounds of the match are counted by the ability to or not to step from in front of the students and follow more than I lead. Absolutely the children need direct guidance and instruction however they also need to hear their own voice within the material, the process, the idea. The only way I can see getting to this with the students is to have had a similar experience in the studio of discovering one's own own visual language. The similar experience also of sparing and sometimes pushing oneself from one's own way to knowledge and deeper understanding.
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