Art

As a kid, I enjoyed art camp and musical camp. I wrote plays with my friend Roxanne. I painted rocks and sold them to my neighbors. The norm. Then, when I was in 6^th grade, I overheard Ms. Gross refer to my artwork as “junk” with a dismissive flit of her hand. Our relationship had already been tense, but with that comment, art became the first class I plotted to skip. I would find myself called to my duties as student council president when art day would arrive or I would conveniently have to leave school early for a skating event. Being a straight ‘A’ student since I arrived in this world, art and creativity became my nemesis. Since the day my work was labeled junk, I built an identity around my non-artistness. Friends of mine hung up pieces of my artwork, not for their esthetic beauty, but instead for their comic value. My artistic talent had notoriety. I stood by as my singing, acting, flute phases slipped away. I wanted to take creative writing in high school, but that would have hurt my GPA, so writing even went to the side. Figure skating was the one area I held onto, but I would label myself an “athletic” skater, not an artistic one, and then I tore my ACL and that was gone too.

So, when I walked into Armando’s studio last week to do art, I really had no idea where to begin. He had a long list of many different types of art I could try out. I decided to start with the most basic, drawing. He sat me down at my own table, propped up a picture of a Mexican woman holding a baby upside down, and told me to draw it without looking at my paper and without lifting my pencil. I twiddled the pencil in my hand and looked to my right where an older retired Canadian woman was sculpting a woman’s body to be a candleholder. I listened as she babbled to her brother on her cell phone. She had to work all day last Friday with Armando because the clay was drying too quickly. And now the sculpture seemed to be cracking because she had made it too top heavy. She worried it would not survive the kiln. Beside her was another older woman lost in her painting. I began to think maybe I should just come back in 40 years. Playing artist could be a project for another time. But, I had my station set up.

After about 15 minutes, Armando came back to check on me. I was quite proud of my upside down Mexican woman. She really resembled the image. But, Armando let out a sigh and gave me a disapproving shake of the head. He knew. I mean did he really want me to not look at the paper at all? And, lifting the pencil was necessary to draw the face! Fine, I admit it; I cheated. That straight ‘A’ student was afraid of failing, and hence failed. He turned the book around and put my pencil in my left hand. He told me again, with a serious tone I could not hide from, to draw it with my left hand, without looking at my paper, and without lifting the pencil. I obliged. This time when he returned he was extremely pleased with what to me looked like a jumbled mess of lines made by that same 6^th grader whose artwork was junk. When I finally got to draw it with all my faculties in order, a decent image appeared on the paper in front of me. I walked away from day 1 feeling a flittering spark and a small bit of shame, vowing not to cheat the next day.

Mexican Woman and Baby, Left handed, No Sight

On day 2, as Armando was getting me situated, I asked him, “Tengo una pregunta, Creas que todas personas pueden dibujar y estar artistas?” In english, “I have a question, do you believe that everyone can draw and be artists?”

Without hesitating, he replied, “si.” I contested, but he said that is probably because someone told me I could not be an artist. Hmph. He said that the majority of his time teaching art is spent fighting the demons of artists’ past. Really he is more of a therapist than an art teacher. So, I guess I was in therapy. Day 2, I did the same exercises without cheating creating some of the most ugly works of art I have ever made. Then, I was granted the honor of using oil pastels. I copied an image of a naked woman hung upside down. I got lost in the drawing, enjoying the smooth nature of the medium. I was excited to turn it over and reveal my great work. In the end, the woman had thighs the size of Texas and Rhode Island for a head, but I still loved her.

Naked Woman, Day 2

On Day 3, I had been beaten up by Spanish pretty badly, and was not really feeling like doing art. I sped through my warm-up exercises, excited to get to my pastel time. I worked for an hour when one of Armando’s apprentices came over, a big guy with dreads who listened to big headphones and was tearing apart a computer for a piece in his upcoming exposition. He complimented my work and showed me how to layer my colors. I felt like we were colleagues. The space that Armando has created in the back of a Spanish colonial courtyard manages to simultaneously inspire, ease, and challenge those who enter it. I only did 3 days with Armando, though I considered staying in the city another week just to do more time there. Still, in three days, I felt that 6^th grader’s junk drifting away from my identity. On Friday, I bought a sketchbook and my own set of pastels.

Woman Washing Clothes, Day 3

It is no coincidence that I took art classes in Oaxaca. Oaxaca is a place that oozes art and culture. You can hardly walk down a street without taking in original artwork, a handcrafted textile, and crowds of sculptures. Try not to be inspired. Through the weeks I have spent in Oaxaca, I have been trying to take the art in little by little:

Whether it has been in my walks down graffiti covered lanes, stops into museums with Mexican painters new and old, the exquisite photography gallery, the anarchist print gallery, 

my day trip to San Bartolo Cayotopec where they have a fantastic art museum showing local crafts and the famous barro negro (black pottery), 

or my amazing afternoon participating with Nikki’s Theater of the Oppressed workshop for teenage girls. People are unapologetically artists in Oaxaca, and they seem to be celebrated for that. On the walk from Nikki’s apartment to Spanish school, I would pass an artist’s gallery that offered drawing classes, a dance studio with salsa classes for young and old, a small studio offering singing classes with the appropriate screeching “ooooo” emanating from it, and without a doubt some group of friends gathered around a guitar singing “Rolling in the Deep.” And somehow, all this art exists in a way that is not pretentious, but inviting.

I am not the best artist. I will never be. But, most people will never be. And, art is not really about being the best, is it? I am constantly in admiration of the courage it takes to be creative. It is much easier to do what we are told and follow paths tread before us. To risk failure and ugliness and embarrassment is all part of what happens when you embrace creativity. But, I am starting to feel like there might be no other way to really live. For years, I rejected being “artistic” because I could not draw or sing and I did not do theater. Now, I am seeing, that being an artist or maybe more easier to own, being creative, is so much more than any one skill set you possess. As Joseph Chilton Pearce said, “To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” And then I would add, act on it. Maybe that is all it is.