Jill Kerttula
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Dear Budget makers; the arts are not dispensable.

5/2/2014

4 Comments

 
I can not remember a time when I have not made things. I can not remember a time when my brain didn't immediately crop and compose whatever I am looking at. I can not imagine my head not saying "what if" and "what about if you"... This is not a brag or a exhalation, just a constant reality of my life, just as each of you have a constant in yours. This is also influenced by the weeks of going through all my saved possessions and artwork as we prepare to move.
Picture
pen and ink done in middle school.
Picture
wood block done in high school
Picture
monoprint done in high school
Picture
welded sculpture done in high school
My memories are not of place, or even always, of people but of what came from it. I remember a Joseph (the one with the coat of many colors) from pre-school Sunday school. He had a circle that attached with a brad and had many feet on it, so when you moved them it looked like he was walking. I remember carefully choosing the colors for his coat. I remember drawing a moose in kindergarten, and I was dumbfounded when my teacher got so excited about it. It was just a moose!

My first run-in with school authorities was when I (apparently) dripped black paint on the floor of the
first-grade while doing my art project. In fourth grade, There was a three-dimensional jaguar for the Amazon (country not software!) display, and my clay sculpture of Lily the dog next door. 

Jumping ahead to middle school, there was the introduction to printmaking and pen and ink drawing, which thrilled me beyond imagining. The combined physicality of carving and the starkness of the line was really compelling to me.

In high school, I also tried my hand at jewelry (couldn't do gold because gold was too expensive at $35./ounce!) and the pottery wheel. Neither really got to me because of the finesse and lack of immediacy in the processes involved, so I did slab clay pieces and discovered welding. And I continued to draw and print.

High School was a challenge for me, and without Don Hunt and Evelyn Bauman I may never had made it out. Their art rooms provided a sanctuary for those of us who didn't quite fit in with the science or jock activities. It was a place you could bare your soul, speak your mind through your hands, and go at your own pace, it was a place where hearing a different drummer was lauded not chided.

Then came adulthood, but I will leave that for another post.


I was not alone in these art rooms. There were many, then and now, who found refuge and joy there; And now budget cuts find them "dispensable". Sorry, but I think not.

Art has been a compulsion and solace for humans since the cave paintings at Lascaux. The arts have, at one extreme, moved our souls and
celebrated or exposed human events; and, at the other extreme, made life simply more enjoyable and pretty. The arts are both subjective and objective; They are private in the creation and and public the experience. The arts can be a livelihood, a hobby,  a rehabilitation or a spectator sport. But they are not dispensable or a luxury to society.

What can you and I do? Make sure our kids have a box of crayons as well as an Xbox. Make sure that in between Spiderman and other blockbusters, they get to go to live theater. How about a stroll through a sidewalk art show. Do we get as excited about the art elective as we do about another AP math class. Do we  chuckle at the idea of an art or music choice for a profession; maybe we should acknowledge it is a viable option?

Finally. And maybe most importantly, do we check the opinions of our candidates about education in the arts before we vote? Maybe we should.
4 Comments
Nancy R
5/2/2014 02:57:40 pm

I have just read "Out on a Limb" by Carolyn Jourdan
in the back she wrote about you, so I needed to look.
I also am blessed to be an artist - and your post for today was as if I wrote this sentence..." I can not remember a time when my brain didn't immediately crop and compose whatever I am looking at. I can not imagine my head not saying "what if" and "what about if you"... "
My earliest memory is an image of a part of my room that I cropped, and this is always how I have begun each step in putting paint to paper, and now in creating growth and change in presenting my vision.
Thank you for being transparent in your writing, and touching me with your words. -NancyR

Reply
jill link
5/2/2014 11:24:37 pm

Nancy, Thanks for reading my words and my best wishes to you and your art endeavors!

Reply
jessica Schatz
5/3/2014 04:25:40 am

Jill, Darlin, For some reason, I got a huge lump in my throat while reading this..we are such kindred souls, when it comes to this subject (maybe a few others, as well).
When I was a little, wee child, we had nothing..I mean nothing..dirt floors, etc., but my Mama made sure we had paper (it may have had something on the back of it, and a pencil (number 2) or at least an Indian Head writing tablet, upon which to draw.
I always felt I was in the shadow of my sister, who excelled early and burnt out early...I would proudly hold up some recent "art", and someone would say, "that's nice, but look what Jeanie did"..that eventually ended. Now, I just take pleasure in the act of creating.
Then, it was a competition.
I, too, have fond memories of art classes throughout the years..I remember my art teacher, playing the first Beatles albums, while we did our thing. I remember her sobbing, as it was announced that JFK had been murdered...(we made black armbands that day)
.
Now, all I see are kids, with games in their hands, or texting one another...sad..but that said, I belong to our local Art Guild, and one of our outreach programs is teaching children to draw, paint, work with clay...most of whom are from the same, grinding poverty from which I sprang...I have come full circle.
Sorry this is so long..you really touched a part of my heart.

Reply
jill link
5/3/2014 05:18:27 am

Jessica, thanks for your reply.

I love hearing your thoughts, and this subject touches many of us very personally I think. So glad you are giving back.

Reply



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