A hostile audience

"God! I do NOT want to do this! Art is stupid! God-uh... Why can't I change classes??" So sang B, the day after it became too late to change classes.

One of the things that attracted me to teaching as a career was the fact that it retained some of the most exciting elements of music as a career - creative, social, with a performance aspect - while adding more rewarding and frankly reliable elements - a state paycheck with state benefits, professional opportunities, and oh right, the chance to positively impact the lives of children. I think it is my background in those first elements that has made my career shift relatively smooth and painless. When I was a record store owner, I learned that if we wanted to be able to pay our bills every month, we needed to adapt to the slippery, evasive needs of our clientele. Perhaps more importantly, as a performer I learned how to negotiate a hostile bar crowd who has not come to see you play tonight, and is refusing to pay the $3 cover charge required if they want to continue to drink there. You stock the right records, you play the right covers, you contort yourself but don't sell yourself out. If we were saving a cover of Cheap Trick's "Surrender" for an encore, we'd open with it to appease the scowling bikers and hobos hovering around our girlfriends.

My brother, now a Penn State faculty member, followed a similar career trajectory from bar band to classroom. From tot to teen, I admired the rock star side of him, and was honestly perplexed by his passion for education. I remember him saying, after being asked by a confused little brother who had just inherited his vintage, no-longer-used Gretsch Chet Atkins Tennessean, that teaching was just as satisfying as performing. Standing up in front of a class of students, he assured me, was just as rewarding as standing up in front of an audience at a club.

I didn't believe him.

Now that I'm on the rational side of planning a career in the creative arts, I can understand where he is coming from, and yes, it is just as rewarding. Maybe even more so, because you know it matters. Songs are great, and I love nothing more than being told by a complete stranger that my music affected them on a deep level, but what fills me with happiness now is to see a student discover a love for art, or if I'm lucky, discover that they have a valid, even important voice.

That's why I take B's comments as a challenge, and one that I'm ready to win.

The project was Hand Drawings, wherein students practice and apply skills for drawing from life and observation - accurate shading and detail are preferred. Though seemingly simple, it is exactly the kind of project that causes a student like B to shut down. Drawing the human body, especially something as complex as the hand, requires a fair amount of skill and, because of the familiarity of the subject, leaves little room for error. Everyone is familiar with what their hand looks like (it's not like the back of their hand, it IS the back of their hand!), so for a student who feels like she can't draw, it is like being asked to speak Russian or breathe underwater. Most often, a student who doesn't understand will reject the project by either shutting down or becoming defiant. B was feeling defiant.

"Let's take it one step at a time. Now, how do you begin drawing hands?" I say. I had shown them some techniques whereby the artist simplifies an object into geometric shapes.

"I don't care, it's stupid!". She is looking away from me. But I'm still there.

"Well, can I see what you've done so far?"

"I didn't do anything. It's not good, I'm not an artist. God, can't I change classes? Can't I take Creative Writing or music instead?"

She has drawn something, in fact, and I move it closer. She is still looking away, and is very poor at hiding her annoyance with me.

It is a rudimentary mitten-shape hand - the first step in the process of observational drawing through geometric reduction. There are still three steps to go: contour lines for the shape of the fingers and hand, details in the wrinkles and lines, and finally shading.

"OK, well this is actually a good start," I encourage.

"No it's not, it's dumb. God."

"Look, you've only just started. Right, it's not beautiful now - I wouldn't buy this and put it in a frame and hang it on the wall - but you're on the right track. You just have to keep going."

She is looking at the drawing now, not looking away. She is quiet.

"It's like cooking. Do you cook? Well let's say you're making a soup. You melted some butter in a pan, cut up some onions, and then you push the pan away saying, 'I can't make soup'. Well you haven't made soup yet! You're only getting started! Wait til you make the soup and taste it, then you can decide if you can make soup or not. OK?"

She is still looking at the drawing. She has picked up her pencil, and is kind of tickling the paper with her pencil. I move away and keep my distance for the remainder of class, but I keep my eye on her. She will work on her drawing for the rest of period.

At the end of class, she comes up to me with a finished drawing of a hand like her own, holding a pencil. It is crude and simple, but she is beaming.

"Look, what do you think?" she gushes. I praise enthusiastically, it is the freaking Mona Lisa. I give her a verbal pat on the back, saying that I always knew she could do it.

She takes the drawing with her, and will come back periodically throughout the day to show me her progress on the drawing. A little detail added to the knuckles. A change in design to a baby hand holding a rattle, and oh yes, how do you draw a rattle? Some color, some shadow. How do you get the right skin tone?

She hasn't asked to drop my class since.