I was reading through some Blogs I like on a Sunday morning and BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF ART is one of my favorites. It's run by Stacy Lord who is one of the best art teachers in the biz and happens to be at Worcester's own East Middle School. I have great admiration for Public (and Charter) School art teachers because unlike those of us who teach at Museum Schools you draw from a student population that isn't devoted to art, and that creates the challenge of overcoming the perception that art is either A. An Easy Class or B. One that is not all that important.
Steve Jobs got inspired by art classes and his study of type and used that to craft Apple Computers. Notice how the newest DELL PC's look a lot like old Apples? Jobs not only created an industry he created taste and beauty in everyday objects, recognizing the power of design and art in everyday life. Small minds don't seem able to grasp that importance.
But Stacy gets it done, and she doesn't plop herself down afterwards exhausted and making excuses, she still gets out there and gets involved in the art scene outside of the classroom.
On to my point, so I was reading Stacy's blog and it mentioned the NAEA National Convention of Art Teachers coming up in New York and it reminded me that I'm one of the speakers so I jumped on over to the website to see what the programs are for the day I'm on and HOLY #($**%@@($(%*^! there are a LOT of programs and they start at the ungodly hour of 8am!
Luckily mine is later in the day on the 3rd so I won't have to stumble onto the stage bleary eyed and coffee clutching but it amazes me that they cram so much programming into a single day --multiplied by four days!
I'll be talking about my experience with ART ALL STATE, and I recently found out I've been selected for the eighth year in a row to be one of the artist mentors for the event this Memorial Day weekend.
ART ALL STATE brings together 140+ high school juniors to team up with a group of 16 professional artists, many of whom have become my close friends, where we split into eight groups and create art installations from limited materials. It's an exciting and inspiring event and one I relish being part of. My big thanks to fellow artist Tom Grady for convincing me to throw my hat in the ring eight years ago AND for his taking last year off so that I could beat his record of most consecutive appearances as a mentor!
