Hi Everyone,
One of the more challenging tasks I’ve ever had was to teach my roommate to drive in South Africa. Part of the issue was that she needed to become accustomed to driving on the left side of the road. But far more difficult was that the car we had access to had a manual transmission, and Claire had driven only automatic cars. I tried to remember what my parents had told me when I was learning to drive Sybil, our manual car, but it was much more difficult than I’d expected. I’d been driving a stick shift for so long that I had stopped paying attention to how to do so. When Claire would ask me questions like, “How do I release the clutch without stalling the car?” I would find myself saying extremely useful things like, “Well, you just kind of do it.”
When students in the drawing class I was assisting this quarter asked questions like, “How do I get the bike tire to look more accurate?” my first instinct was often to respond the same way: “You just kind of do it.” I’ve been drawing for so long that, at this point, many of the techniques I use are subconscious. This, of course, is fabulously unhelpful to the students who cannot tap into my subconscious. So this quarter, as I learned about teaching through my internship in the drawing class (and in my other assistantship in a materials and techniques class), my task was to figure out how to communicate the methods, skills and knowledge I use to create art. The classes were designed to provide students with enough of their own artistic experience that eventually, drawing would become second nature to them.
The more I think about teaching, the more I’m realizing that my discipline has been an ideal preparation. Illustrator Steve Brodner (who came to SCAD my first year here), gives this definition of his occupation: “Illustration, or narrative art, is about using visual language to tell a story in the most beautiful, compelling way possible. . . in under a second. It does not exist to merely fill a hole in a page of type. Rather, its purpose is to communicate clearly while engaging the eye, the mind and heart of the viewer. If successful, it has the potential for rewarding the viewer with a fresh, illuminating, even transcendent experience.”
Conveniently, this also sums up much of what I believe about teaching. Like illustration, teaching is successful only when you communicate clearly -- that’s part of the very definition of education. Teaching is most memorable and most effective when students are encouraged to engage not just their mind, but their senses and their hearts as well. While good instruction takes much longer than just a second, I believe that ideal learning is marked by moments that are “fresh, illuminating, even transcendent.”
To extend the comparison between teaching and illustration even further, if a viewer of an illustration doesn’t engage with the piece, either visually or mentally, the message is ineffectual. The same is true in education: good teachers can take you only so far -- good students are necessary to complete the equation. As a teacher, the question then becomes, how do you create an environment that fosters good studentship? With art, at least, I think it comes down to providing as many opportunities as possible for students to produce work. The more often we engage with the creative process -- regardless of the immediate results -- the more likely we are to grow.
Now that I am officially done with SCAD, it is a good time to look back at the last two and a half years and reflect on how my work has grown since I began. The development I’ve seen has come about partly through specific instruction and feedback from my professors and peers. But part of my artistic growth has occurred simply because I’ve been doing art for two and a half years straight. Like all skills, art takes not just knowledge, but also time and practice. I might know the mechanics of
how to do a pirouette or a trombone solo, but until I spend time and effort actually
doing these skills, I cannot claim them as my own. Teaching is the same. A professor might have an impressive teaching philosophy and a stunning publication record, but until she actually spends time in the classroom with students, she cannot claim to be a teacher.
I’m a bit embarrassed to say that when I first arrived at SCAD, I couldn’t actually define the discipline in which I was about to get a terminal degree. Now I not only know what illustration is, it has become almost second nature. My final SCAD class was called “Professional Practices.” One of my assignments was to create two images I could send out as post cards to art directors, publishers, or editors to represent my style and to sell myself as an artist. That was it. When I started at SCAD two years ago, I wouldn’t have known how to begin such a simultaneously vague and individualized assignment. Now, however, I just sort of did them:
"Under the Sea," gouache resist
"Connecting," pencil and digital
I did a few other independent projects recently as well. Qian is in Graphic Design, and for one of her classes this quarter, she was designing a magazine for Chinese twenty-somethings. She asked me to illustrate one of the articles, which was about how rumors spread on the internet. She played the part of the art director very well, and it was good to go through the process of conceiving and creating the art with someone who wasn’t my professor.
Qian made a few adjustments for the final
I finished another project just this week. Michele, one of my Hollins friends, commissioned me to re-illustrate one of the images from a Christmas video my brother and I made for our church two years ago. I was grateful for the opportunity to revisit it with more time than I’d had originally, and with a bit more confidence in my compositional and mud-painting abilities. Though this commission was for a friend, it was good to be able to practice going through the business side of things.
The 2009 version. Black paper, mud from Roanoke, VA.
The new version. Blue watercolor paper, mud from South Africa.
I may be done with SCAD, but there is obviously still a lot I need and want to learn. Most immediately, I need to figure out how to get two years’ worth of art materials and projects home. While I am confident that I have the ability and resources to do this (fortunately, Becky, Qian and I have been saving boxes for a while now), I think that mostly, I’m going to have to just kind of do it.
Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse
ps: If you’re interested in seeing the Christmas video, it’s at
http://www.vimeo.com/8521253. (Huge apologies to those who care about typography for the use of -- gulp! -- Papyrus. Please let this be a reflection of how far I’ve come in two years!)
(courtesy of www2.wsav.com)
(courtesy of www.atlanticfeet.com)
