ARTSblog

My high school ceramics instructor thought I was crazy when I told him I wanted to be an orthodontist.  “No, I think you should be an artist,” He said sternly to me as I worked on my perfecting my pinch pot jack o’lantern that was suffering from a severe under bite.  That was a little over 8 years ago, and now I’m writing this blog.

Over the last 6 years I have been involved in multiple aspects of arts education; teaching Saturday art classes to youth, working at a youth museum, and working at a state arts agency for over three years.  I received both my BFA and MA from Arizona State University in Arts Education.  I recently relocated from Arizona to DC after experiencing a three-month travel adventure.
I’m not sure if my adventure would have been quite the same if I never would have taken any arts classes in high school and gave up on my dream of becoming an orthodontist, and actually not even sure if the adventure would have happened at all.  Looking back on the experiences I had in arts classes I had been quite the risk-taker.  Fortunately, my ceramics teacher was all about taking risks in the classroom.  “Clay is forgiving,” he used to say.  If a massive slab I had made had cracked drying over night, it was easy to fix.  If I accidently slopped the wrong color glaze on my pot, I just washed it off.

Problem solving, anticipating those problems before they happen, taking risks, knowing that if something doesn’t turn out exactly the way you want it to in life, doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world.  That is what I learned in arts class and that is what I have applied to my career in arts education and also life in general.

My ceramics instructor always had an answer as to why something didn’t work, or why Mom’s jewelry box came out from the kiln in pieces.  I am sure he anticipated the problem while we worked along on our projects but he didn’t stop us from making mistakes or taking risks.  He’d recommend, or suggest, alternative ways of getting to Point B, but there was never one answer, and in life when is there?

I believe that a well-rounded, diverse, and well-supported arts education allows students and children the opportunity to explore risk-taking and problem solving in a supportive environment.  From the beginning stages of conceptualizing a project and working with the variables to get to where one wants to go, participating in arts education programs fosters skills in students and children; skills that are necessary in life and applicable outside of the classroom.

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