Nobody said that the arts will keep people out of trouble.
They are not the magical equation of a safety pill that when swallowed will cure all ills and warm the gullet and brighten gray winter days with sudden rays of sunlight.
Although sometimes, an experience in the arts can feel like that.
I still remember when my eyes were opened to a sculpture that, without some aesthetic education, I would have looked at as a twisted pile of metal. Seriously? Someone twisted metal and called it art, and all of a sudden they're getting paid thousands? Seems like a joke, right?
Except, it's amazing. There was so much within that little pile of twisted metal that once my eyes were opened to the aesthetics of it, the metal sang. It created a song. It danced. It was about form, and the bending and twisting and off-balance angling of the metal form. It was about space, the distance between two delicately balanced sharp prongs-- it was about the softness of the shape against the hard unforgiving structure of metal. There was a story to be found within it. In other words, once I understood some of the craft behind the sculpture, my strong imagination was able to do the rest. It became art. It became valuable and worthy of study and reflection.
That was visual art, a medium I was unfamiliar with. I am familiar with dance, and song, and poetry and writing. Those are my arts mediums.
Art is not a cure. It's a process. An opening. One artistic experience does not turn a math grade into an A. But many art experiences, and the daydreaming, and the discipline of studying any one of the art forms, allows the mind to generate these synapses that cross the structure of our studies. They allow a student to form a connection between equation A and equation B, because art is cross-curricular. Listening to a symphony is fine. Understanding that the sound of the violins is contrasting the pulsing rhythm of the bass-- that's more amazing. Understanding that when listening to a symphony you are allowed to imagine, daydream or concentrate on the music as much as you like (for instance, to think about the violins, the tonality of the song, the history of its making or even to let it remind you of your dog, or your breakfast food, or a nonverbal series of colors and shapes)-- that's freedom.
Art is reflection, study, discipline, freedom, political statement and permission for fun and silliness. Art is a place where mistakes are okay-- where, in fact, the development of the artwork is through a series of mistakes and trials and experiments and sudden grasps of understanding.
A dancer, for instance, wants to twist midair through a leap because the music - or her spirit- calls for a dramatic move. She doesn't think it and it happens. No, even for artists there is no magic pill that allows art to happen just because you will it-- she trains her body by leaping, twisting, falling. She realizes her stomach muscles are required, and she spends hours strengthening them. She leaps, twists, falls again. She is not graceful, so she practices for hours and weeks to get it right. All for the beauty of one moment of expression. That's art. What does it do for the rest of us? When a dancer moves, we move with them- our bodies sympathetically align with the dancer, and we move in ways our unstudied bodies never could-- we see the possibility of movement in ourselves, and when we get home we try to leap too. We look like elephants trying to jump over a puddle, but in our minds our bodies become as beautiful as the dancer's. For a moment, anyway. That's art.
I study what the arts can do for students when we get them to engage with an art form and begin thinking in that different way. Where their thoughts and ideas are welcomed. Where they are-- not challenged-- but brightened. Enhanced. Worked with. Accepted.
You see, art is where ideas grow.
It is where ideas come to learn how to grow and exist in forms that other people can experience.
It is where emotions live, and where the hard study and sacrifice necessary to create good art are allowed to thrive. You can test someone on the history they know of any art. But you cannot replace the experience of it with study alone. The only way to the arts is by doing, struggling, studying, practicing, and ultimately-- creating.
I tell my students that the only way to write, is to write. The ideas don't leap onto the page by themselves, you have to put them there. And that's what artists do.
So the arts don't keep people out of trouble or magically cure all ills. But they transform lives, and moments, and ways of thinking. They embrace and experiment with ideas. They reveal our weaknesses and our strengths. They are worthy of our time, our study, our attention. The arts are our humanity.
Capisce?
They are not the magical equation of a safety pill that when swallowed will cure all ills and warm the gullet and brighten gray winter days with sudden rays of sunlight.
Although sometimes, an experience in the arts can feel like that.
I still remember when my eyes were opened to a sculpture that, without some aesthetic education, I would have looked at as a twisted pile of metal. Seriously? Someone twisted metal and called it art, and all of a sudden they're getting paid thousands? Seems like a joke, right?
Except, it's amazing. There was so much within that little pile of twisted metal that once my eyes were opened to the aesthetics of it, the metal sang. It created a song. It danced. It was about form, and the bending and twisting and off-balance angling of the metal form. It was about space, the distance between two delicately balanced sharp prongs-- it was about the softness of the shape against the hard unforgiving structure of metal. There was a story to be found within it. In other words, once I understood some of the craft behind the sculpture, my strong imagination was able to do the rest. It became art. It became valuable and worthy of study and reflection.
That was visual art, a medium I was unfamiliar with. I am familiar with dance, and song, and poetry and writing. Those are my arts mediums.
Art is not a cure. It's a process. An opening. One artistic experience does not turn a math grade into an A. But many art experiences, and the daydreaming, and the discipline of studying any one of the art forms, allows the mind to generate these synapses that cross the structure of our studies. They allow a student to form a connection between equation A and equation B, because art is cross-curricular. Listening to a symphony is fine. Understanding that the sound of the violins is contrasting the pulsing rhythm of the bass-- that's more amazing. Understanding that when listening to a symphony you are allowed to imagine, daydream or concentrate on the music as much as you like (for instance, to think about the violins, the tonality of the song, the history of its making or even to let it remind you of your dog, or your breakfast food, or a nonverbal series of colors and shapes)-- that's freedom.
Art is reflection, study, discipline, freedom, political statement and permission for fun and silliness. Art is a place where mistakes are okay-- where, in fact, the development of the artwork is through a series of mistakes and trials and experiments and sudden grasps of understanding.
A dancer, for instance, wants to twist midair through a leap because the music - or her spirit- calls for a dramatic move. She doesn't think it and it happens. No, even for artists there is no magic pill that allows art to happen just because you will it-- she trains her body by leaping, twisting, falling. She realizes her stomach muscles are required, and she spends hours strengthening them. She leaps, twists, falls again. She is not graceful, so she practices for hours and weeks to get it right. All for the beauty of one moment of expression. That's art. What does it do for the rest of us? When a dancer moves, we move with them- our bodies sympathetically align with the dancer, and we move in ways our unstudied bodies never could-- we see the possibility of movement in ourselves, and when we get home we try to leap too. We look like elephants trying to jump over a puddle, but in our minds our bodies become as beautiful as the dancer's. For a moment, anyway. That's art.
I study what the arts can do for students when we get them to engage with an art form and begin thinking in that different way. Where their thoughts and ideas are welcomed. Where they are-- not challenged-- but brightened. Enhanced. Worked with. Accepted.
You see, art is where ideas grow.
It is where ideas come to learn how to grow and exist in forms that other people can experience.
It is where emotions live, and where the hard study and sacrifice necessary to create good art are allowed to thrive. You can test someone on the history they know of any art. But you cannot replace the experience of it with study alone. The only way to the arts is by doing, struggling, studying, practicing, and ultimately-- creating.
I tell my students that the only way to write, is to write. The ideas don't leap onto the page by themselves, you have to put them there. And that's what artists do.
So the arts don't keep people out of trouble or magically cure all ills. But they transform lives, and moments, and ways of thinking. They embrace and experiment with ideas. They reveal our weaknesses and our strengths. They are worthy of our time, our study, our attention. The arts are our humanity.
Capisce?
