Here is the deal. After ten enjoyable years of teaching fifth grade, the art position at my school became available. My principal was kind enough to let me spread my wings and fly back to my original calling in education; art! It had been twelve years since I had been an art teacher so the move was both exciting and a little nerve rattlling!
I knew within a week that I had made the right call; it felt great to be back in the visual arts. One of the reasons I chose art education was because I have been fasinated with the artisitic habits and works of young children. It is so inspiring to hear twenty-something kindergarten students tell you that they are artists. Yeah! and besides that they can sing, dance, leap tall building in a single bound, and anything else you put in front of them. The flip side of that is that by the time these same creative daredevils hit middle school they do not feel like they can do anything!
What happens?
Where does it go?
I am working on the answers (and hopefully some solutions) to those questions, but we'll have to get back to that later.
The reason that I am pointing all this out is because I spend a great deal of time impressing upon these impressionable minds that if they are creating something---anything--then, in a very real way, they ARE artist's! So I am spending all this time talking them up as artist and it dawns on me that if I claim to be an artist then I should also be creating something. Thus, almost twenty years sincle my last prolific artistic endeavors, I pick up my brushes and watercolor pencils and renew my namesake; artist!
Now I had painted a couple commisioned pieces, worked on a couple murals with my brother, and created some work for vacation bible school, but nothing just for art's sake. Without fail, after completing one of these works I would think to myself, "Man! This is fun, I have got to get back into this gig!" but I never did. Until now...
Here is that first piece that got the ball rolling:
