Whether or Not it really Matters
I’ve been playing around with art for years.
In the seventh grade I attended the Art Student’s League with a friend. Every Saturday morning we dragged our materials on the IND train. I expect that we were the youngest in the drawing class because after we finished months of still life drawings we moved on to life drawings.
I recall spending more time looking at my drawing board then at the model, but I do remember Susie. She used an eyebrow pencil to draw on bangs and rather than a model’s figure she was rather rotund. According to the instructor Susie held a pose for a remarkably long time and could easily resume the same pose when her break was up.
Occasionally a male model posed —with a strap. My mother came to pick me up one Saturday, opened the door and gasped. I tried to ignore her, pretending that she was someone else’s mother.
Unfortunately my charcoal still life won a gold key and blue ribbon at the Scholastic Art Exhibit. My sense of a work ethic seemed to dissipate with the key.
While at Music & Art High School, an exam school for “talented” art and music students—although one teacher bemoaned the fact that they took in more students than really qualified, I took all the necessary art courses:pen and ink, oil, watercolor, design and so forth. In my senior year I majored in stage design because I had put in too little effort in the other areas and thought I had some sort of innate ability around set design. That was not the case.
Some of my friends spent hours and hours honing their skills—I wanted my drawings and paintings to be good with a casual amount of labor.
Stage Design was fun—a group of us went to see plays off Broadway and discussed the merits of the play and the stage design while we drank espresso in one of the Village cafes.
Over the years I’ve collected sundry art supplies, organized them in a makeshift basement studio and periodically took courses. But the same itch follows me around, a spectre—the desire for a finished product without really putting in the time.
One of my collages was accepted in a juried art show—
So now I want each piece to be worthy—but the time, the repetitions, the sweat—all seem too arduous.
I guess , for me, it isn’t really worth it. But why the disappointment?
In the seventh grade I attended the Art Student’s League with a friend. Every Saturday morning we dragged our materials on the IND train. I expect that we were the youngest in the drawing class because after we finished months of still life drawings we moved on to life drawings.
I recall spending more time looking at my drawing board then at the model, but I do remember Susie. She used an eyebrow pencil to draw on bangs and rather than a model’s figure she was rather rotund. According to the instructor Susie held a pose for a remarkably long time and could easily resume the same pose when her break was up.
Occasionally a male model posed —with a strap. My mother came to pick me up one Saturday, opened the door and gasped. I tried to ignore her, pretending that she was someone else’s mother.
Unfortunately my charcoal still life won a gold key and blue ribbon at the Scholastic Art Exhibit. My sense of a work ethic seemed to dissipate with the key.
While at Music & Art High School, an exam school for “talented” art and music students—although one teacher bemoaned the fact that they took in more students than really qualified, I took all the necessary art courses:pen and ink, oil, watercolor, design and so forth. In my senior year I majored in stage design because I had put in too little effort in the other areas and thought I had some sort of innate ability around set design. That was not the case.
Some of my friends spent hours and hours honing their skills—I wanted my drawings and paintings to be good with a casual amount of labor.
Stage Design was fun—a group of us went to see plays off Broadway and discussed the merits of the play and the stage design while we drank espresso in one of the Village cafes.
Over the years I’ve collected sundry art supplies, organized them in a makeshift basement studio and periodically took courses. But the same itch follows me around, a spectre—the desire for a finished product without really putting in the time.
One of my collages was accepted in a juried art show—
So now I want each piece to be worthy—but the time, the repetitions, the sweat—all seem too arduous.
I guess , for me, it isn’t really worth it. But why the disappointment?
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