An unsolved conditional statement in the form of a question.

IF hypothesis, THEN conclusion.

IF

Craft refers to skill

THEN

what does Art refer to?

What happens?  Whether or not the partnership limps along on its dysfunctional path, barely making any progress or partners start pulling out of the program fed up with the perceived impossibility of their colleagues, everybody loses.

The following is a worst-case scenario:  The afterschool arts program ceases to exist at a particular school in a particular community where additional arts learning is of particular necessity.

1. The kids lose.  Over and over again, the kids will always lose the most, absolutely.  Every single time. Forever and ever, amen.
2. The kids’ community loses.  Every young artist spreads seeds of creativity wherever they go and kids like to show off what they know.  No art for the kids means less art knowledge and lack of innovative skill sets dispersed among their peers and their families.  The parents won’t see how their kids are growing their voices and identities because of their exposure to the arts. No art = no arts advocacy.  The community goes back to seeing the arts as frivolity and not as necessity.  Politicians steal money from federal arts funding initiatives and nobody stands up for supporting the arts because they have not seen what the arts can do.
3. The teaching artist loses a large chunk of her bread and butter and a potentially great opportunity to grow within her practice and learn teaching strategies from the classroom teacher.  She loses the ability to teach kids with a new perspective they may not have ever been exposed to.  She loses the opportunity to learn from her kids and become inspired by their energy and ideas in order to formulate new concepts about teaching and making art.
4. The teacher loses a little supplemental scratch and a potentially great opportunity to grow within her practice.  Her eyes remain closed to creative possibility and the transformative properties of arts learning for her kids.  She loses the chance to see her kids in a different light and have deeper, one-on-one relationships with them, as they make decisions for themselves, become smarter and more empowered.  She never finds out how a great collaboration with an artist can improve the course of her teaching and the achievement of her students.
5. The school loses an outstanding opportunity for improved student achievement through creative problem solving and arts expression.  It loses the attention of a new widespread audience gained by the partnership.  It loses recognition by supporters of the partnering arts organization and those others who may make decisions about much needed funding.  It loses variety, color, expression, individuality and high spirit as fostered by a nurturing arts learning environment.  The hallways are artless blank concrete block.  The kids continue to “hate school.”
6. The partnering arts organization loses the support of everyone attached to that school.  The organization loses visibility as proactive supporters of the community. The funders have questions instead of confidence in the partnership and the organization’s decision as to why they chose to work with this school in particular.  The organization’s reputation for doing stellar work may be impacted in the eyes of some.  No funding = no arts programs = no jobs for artists = a boring, failing economy .  See #s  1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

See here for more on arts advocacy and its impact on arts policy.

Is there anything else left to lose?  Surely I must have missed something.

Curiously, looking over my list, I wonder: is it possible that the teaching artist may actually have the least to lose (bread and butter aside)?  Is it perhaps because she already has the arts learning under her belt and goes forth with the foundation of empowerment she is trying to cultivate in her students?

It is past time for those who are charged with leading to grow up.  Failure is not an option.  There is too much at stake.  {Also known as:  Time to suck it up again, self, and keep on keepin’ on.  Even in the face of adversity, ego, confusing power trips, continual misunderstanding and diminishing communication.  Just do your work, stay clear on your focus and trust yourself.  Hopefully the rest will sort itself out if you lead by example, because words don’t seem to be working right now.  It ain’t easy.  If it was, you wouldn’t be doing it.}

Ahhhhhhhhh!

*photo courtesy of sense-think-act.org

What effect do you feel work as a teaching artist has had on your art making?

I don’t know the answer to this question.

I took a Teaching Artist Survey (TARP) on Monday from the University of Chicago’s Survey Lab and I was surprised to note how it opened my eyes to looking at my teaching artistry in a more objective sense.  Every so often, it helps me to “take inventory,” as it were, of my teaching artist’s practice.  To step aside to view my professional life in black and white, instead of the myriad shades of gunmetal grey with which I tend to surround myself.  I remember in undergrad my mentor had to physically remove me from one of my drawings just so I could get some damn perspective on a piece I was potentially overworking.  This act of kindness I have tried and failed to replicate for myself over the years.  Theoretically, I can easily comprehend the value in stepping back.  In an empirical sense, I notice that my dedication to the act of making reigns and, ironically, I have trouble observing my own practice.

What I know is this:  My artmaking and who I am as an artist informs every aspect of how I live, teaching included.  I strive to live artfully, without retreat.  So how come I can’t figure out the impact my teaching has on my artmaking?  I want it to have some positive impact, I sense that some impact exists, but I can’t put my finger on it.

On the survey, the scale was 2 to -2 for this question of how my teaching impacts my artmaking.  Very positive, somewhat positive, no effect, somewhat negative, very negative.  True to my character, I checked ’somewhat positive,’ knowing not how, but hoping I would figure its impact out soon.

Looking again at my answer, my feeling on the matter is becoming closer to the negative side.  The fact is: teaching is my trade.  By this, I mean that I trade the time I would spend making my own work for the income I gain by teaching.

It may sound grim and flat, but here it is, the result of taking inventory of my teaching practice in black and white.

Two truths and a question:

I learn to make better art by practicing making art.
Teaching distracts me from making art.
If I discover that my teaching has little or no positive effect on my artmaking, I must then consider the larger question at hand:  Why continue teaching?

Every so often, I am in partnership with a classroom teacher with whom, for whatever reason, collaboration is difficult, if not excruciating.  Silly things like ego, territorialism, and lack of flexibility tend to make a promising collaboration something just short of a nightmare because not only must I manage a classroom full of kids, but I now also have to manage the teacher.  The worst part is that the focus comes away from the kids in situations like these and that just plain pisses me off.

So I make sure the teacher knows I am not a threat but an equal, I offer my cell number as an additional way to contact me, I clarify all that is confusing, I send my detailed emails and hope for the best.  I can’t {read: won’t} carry a program all on my own.  It is unjust for all parties involved.

Then the flipside to this darkness:  These are the moments in which I realize just how fortunate I have been, in all my 9 years as a teaching artist, to have been a part of some truly amazing partnerships with classroom teachers.

To my partner classroom teachers:  Thank you.

For being open to possibility, for believing that the arts do work because you see it happening, for encouraging your kids to think outside of their comfort zones by bringing me into your classroom.  Thanks for being an active collaborator, a partner in crime, as it were, and raising critical questions about our work together.  Thank you for communicating with me in a timely fashion, and for being simultaneously confused and curious and allowing the latter to guide you.  Through budget & time constraints we travel, sharing the work with our eyes on the prize.  Thank you for taking risks alongside myself and the kids and for acknowledging that the unknown is a beautiful place.  You treat me with warmth, as though I am not a stranger or a visitor to your class.  You treat me as a part of your  family.

Thank you.

Today, I began a project on creating audio-based oral histories with a group of lively seniors at a high school in my neighborhood.  I knew I would be seeing a few kids who I’d taught previously in an afterschool arts program I created at a youth service agency a few years back.  I knew I’d be teaching my next-door neighbor whom I have watched grow for the past 5 years.  I stood by the door as the kids shuffled in like heavy weights and watched for “my” kids.  I was surprised to see 3 additional kids I knew from the same afterschool art program, all growed up and reliably awkward and more or less ready to learn. Out of 6 kids I knew, 2 gave hugs, 2 gave hand slaps.  I was honored.

We will be using vocalo.org, sort of myspace or youtube for audio.  The kids were knocked out when the classroom teacher and I told them that they will be using their cell phones to document their audio interviews.  We will also be teaching them sound editing by way of a free program called Audacity, which is how I cut my teeth learning to build sound.  I’ve since graduated to Ableton Live, which I use in spurts when I get those evasive, glowing moments to work on my own projects.

While I was explaining why making oral histories is important, I said that, believe it or not, they have a voice in the world and their voices have power.  Their eyes lit up at my declaration, so on I rambled, speaking of practical skills the arts teach which will increase their pay rates; how, as seniors, having sound editing skills and a better ability to listen will will pay off in respect from their peers; that once you learn something well, you, too, become a teacher.

I was amazed by the gloriousness of the architecture I plodded up to through misshapen mounds of gray snow on the westmost side of my high-risk neighborhood.   I’m pretty sure I saw the building glow.  I definitely gasped.  The school was built in  2004 and looks like a shiny, modern community college.  The school emblems are embroidered onto the polo shirts, not screenprinted.  The computer lab works.  I didn’t hear any angry yelling from teacher or students.  The kids made eye contact and held the door open for me.  The hallways were teeming  with young lovers holding hands, holding hips, kissing lips; somehow I sensed curious love and a gentle respect for one another.  What I am struck by most is that there is definitely something to be said for a clean, open-spaced, brightly sunlit school building.  There is nowhere to hide and perhaps little need to.  I can tell even in my first visit there that these kids, whom I know have endured some of the worst, most tragic events one could ever imagine, take their schooling at least a little bit seriously.  What a difference a space makes!

As a “bell-ringer” in the morning, the classroom teacher will ask the kids to consider something and write down what it means to them.  Here is the quote she had for our first day of this project, attributed to Will Durant:

Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry… The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river.

Yes!  Only 3 days into the new year and already I have accomplished one adventure!  Very important for me to keep up with, since my “free time” is not as dependable as I’d like.

Today, my Beloved and my SuperPuppy went to Matthiessen State Park in Utica, IL to see about some frozen waterfalls.  We didn’t find much evidence at first glance, since the recent thaw turned glaciated spills into running water, but we pressed on, walking along chilled land, exploring fantastical scenes taken straight out of the winter-y part of Legend…

The real show began at the Lower Dells, an odyssey we could have easily missed if not for our curiosities.

Reluctantly, the ice spoke with us as we slid across it to the tilted footbridge.  Our mortal interference elicited responses giant and low.  Distant delayed refrains in onomatopoetic cracks, hisses, booms, pops and sizzles appraised our small paths across its surface.  Sheets of ice upturned as if a gentle earthquake had passed through.  Panes of glass, they were, clear as atmosphere and thick as romance novels.  We threw them like skipping stones across the surface of the glazed water and watched as they skittered as mice do into safety.

Nearby Starved Rock was flooded, as we found out later in the day, and had made a distended skating rink of the parking lot.  All that ice was not much for easy climbing and descending of the umpteen stairs we took to French Canyon, especially as dusk fell and the treacherous, frictionless path made it that much more dangerous.  And, as we all know, danger = fun.

The End.

As I stand where I am this brisk and monochrome morning, grinding my coffee as I always do in my grandmother’s wooden box grinder, I consider how I want to begin this new year.  2008 has certainly been a wild ride: very huge highs and very deep lows and, to my surprise and awe, somewhere in the middle… it just evened out.  I am grateful for my good fortunes and, for once, I don’t feel the need to furiously bury the past year under stacks of new year’s hopes.

This is why, when my Beloved and I came home to our animal house last night from a good couple of hour’s cheer with friends, he and I agreed to just be doing “nothing” when the clock struck midnight.  Merely eating our scrumptious homemade meal and watching a movie.  I want the blessings of 2008 to continue on into 2009.  No old doors slamming shut, no kaleidoscope-fantastic portals opening… Indeed, no big whoop.

Selected Acknowledgements for the Crooked Roads of 2008:

I love that my family and friends know me well enough to ask at the beginning of our phone conversations: “So where are you now?”  It makes me happy to feel known in that way.

I kept in contact with loved ones better last year and for this I feel accomplished.  Even though my time and, more importantly, focus goes to teaching for 18 hours a day, I want to reach out better to many more pals, even if it is at random hours or I am feeling slightly braindead.  After all, my friends are amazing and worthwhile!  Why not call even when I am a little braindead so that we can perk each other up?

Texas reaffirmed that making art in the middle of nowhere is an indispensable odyssey and is one of the many hearts of my artist’s practice.  However it comes and however I craft it, travel and site-specific work are necessary to my work’s survival.  Ghost towns, here I come!

I finished a book for the first time in possibly a decade or more.  Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. It took me 6 months to complete, but I did it. Reluctantly, I concede that I don’t possess the wherewithal to still myself and read books (or even sit and write!),  this year I will experiment with audiobooks, beginning with Steve Martin’s Born Standing Up and Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.

To Soap Opera’s diligent inception and the bright future of Scary Movie Party:  let the insatiable creativity never end!  Thank you, friends.

I told one of the many non-profits that I work for a couple of years ago that I wanted to do more work with them.  When it rains, it pours, but happily this time! For the first time in my 9 years of teaching, I did not have to fear for my general city survival this winter and wait a dismal, anxious 3 months for my programs to start.  Truly, I do not know what to do with money that doesn’t quickly slip through my fingers and I need to be careful, especially as so many others are sliding down the economy’s chute of darkness.  Hopefully, I will continue to work that out in 2009 and beyond.

President Barack Obama and his pragmatic and hopeful approach to the splintered wheel of American Politicks.  He is just one human, as we all are.  So let us all come together and stay together these next 8 years.  Let the positive impact be infinite.

My Beloved still goes away.  My Beloved still comes back.  He will always be my Beloved.  It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.

My first adventure of the new year will already be this Saturday the 3rd. I am on the hunt for frozen waterfalls. Here we go, pup!  To beginning our 14th year together…

I wish a bountiful and prosperous new year to you all.  Keep up the good work.

I spent 5 hours at Grant Park in Chicago last night at the Obama election night rally, waiting and watching and cheering with a quarter million others.  My voice is hoarse from the jubilee, my heart is remarkably light and, with my eye on my many communities, I can see clearly the work I have ahead of me.  Not since the RNC protest in NYC a few years back have I felt this good about being in solidarity with an enormous crowd.  Through the crisp autumn air, the giant reverberations of Obama’s speech electrified the atmosphere and ushered in a sort of awakening within us.  We went in confident and spirited and came out renewed and inspired, with much hope for overcoming the many dark sides of our United States.  I think for possibly the first time in my life, I felt a very distinct pride in both myself and my fellow americans.  And a deep respect for the candidate I voted for, which is definitely a first.

I’m not sure if you all felt different today, I certainly did. As I drove myself from one school to another down a decidedly forgotten portion of town, I watched how people were nearly swaggering along the city streets, how their usually aggressive body language had relaxed a bit, how many were smiling instead of scowling.  Then I realized that it may not actually be the world which has changed overnight– it must have been me and my perspective of scenes I’ve viewed so often that I have them memorized.  The change Obama is talking about must first come from within each and every one of us, but we also must desire that change.  Apparently, I do. I find myself looking at my world differently now, not as guardedly as city living tends to dictate, but without doubt that, somehow, we can all make our shared space better for what little, yet generous, time we have here together.  As we all witnessed on election night, the impact of one individual is quite profound.

My newest adventure involves co-teaching sixty-six 4th graders about screenprinting, the rise of mass media, the role of propaganda and workers’ rights, specifically child labor.  It is an extensive and ambitious exercise in teaching social justice with many stumbling blocks to overcome and only half the funding necessary.  As usual, I will have to get “extra-creative.”  Today we looked at WWII-era US propaganda posters and came to the iconic and handsome Rosie the Riveter who firmly states: “We Can Do It!”  Though it was truly an unwitting reference, these kids, who live in Obama’s Hyde Park neighborhood and are incredibly excited about the election results and their souvenir Obama t-shirts, immediately understood the connection between Rosie and Barack’s messages.  Further into the project, the kids will learn all about the phrase coined by César Chavez in his work with the United Farm Workers: “¡Sí se Puede!” or “Yes, We Can!”  The message is the motivation, the spirit is innate and the world is most definitely watching.

No matter how (or if) you voted, it is probable that we all voted with a certain amount of self-protection in mind.  Like/unlike many americans, I have no 401k to protect (by default), no health insurance (by choice) and, as an artist AND teacher, nothing more to lose.  This is the first presidential election in which I have had the opportunity to vote for a candidate instead of voting one way because I am against the other.  This time, I am proud to have voted my conscience, with hope in heart and fuller steam ahead.

Like it or not, this is a time for change, we are in desperate need an advocate, a symbol of possibility, a leader whose mere presence in the white house shows us how far we’ve come and still how much farther we have to go.  We deserve an extraordinary president, not a dim bulb.  Obama has promised us many things, much like anyone campaigning, and we must hold him accountable for his actions on our behalf.  Likewise, if we are to heal our divisions and offenses both inside and out of our country, he must hold us accountable for doing good work for the benefit of the whole.  There is no more space for the President nor the People to let one another down anymore.

All of this is why I am going to try my damnedest, no matter how much more strife is ahead, to be the change which I seek.

Wow.  I never thought I’d be at the point in my practice when I could say that I am very tired of writing grant proposals.  I have been so active in finding and applying for opportunities that it is difficult for me to see my own work well enough to write about it objectively anymore.  It doesn’t help to keep looking at this “old” work at the same time that I am anxious to make new work and am already planning the beginnings of my most major project to date early this fall.

I am certainly thankful, just burned out on thinking about myself, what I mean by the art I make and how to put that definitively on the page.

What is on the other side of this crappy feeling, I wonder?  I mean, Iron Maiden has been playing the same songs for decades.  How do they not get tired of their work?

(The above, originally begun on 6/29/2008; Below, amended today, 9/7/2008.)

Three days til I hit the road and I am still not done with that blasted application.  Instead of beating myself up over it, I am sitting peacefully beside my resistance to completing this task. I presume I am overwhelmed.

Yes, I still have too much to do in addition to finishing it and yes, I am definitely bored of self-analysis (because I can get painfully detail-oriented, especially when discussing my work) but… I think what is really happening here is that I am just anxious to get on with the work itself, the dig, the happy ache, the efforts which let me veritably know that I am indeed alive.  In truth, dissecting what I make and translating its multiple facets is just not cutting it for me right now.  We shall see what happens between now and Wednesday.  Perhaps I’ll just say farg it and get it over with, knowing that there are people out there who may be quite happy to support such a preposterous endeavour.  Even for the hope of that recognition, I am very thankful.

Now to continue sewing my dress for the project.  Perhaps while sewing, I will become reinspired to complete the application as just one more stepping stone on my crooked path in this enormous dirty magnificent scary breathtaking unhurried sanguine journey.

Onward! To the peepshow!

Soon I will be driving 1200 miles to the middle of nowhere Texas to dig a hole as deep as I am tall.  Around the hole will fall circles of handmade, life-sized concentric trenches built by pickaxe, shovel, might and sheer will.  So continues my inquiry into body studies: movement inside landscape; exploring toil as an artistic medium. Moving far beyond durational performance and headlong into performative endurance.  Yeah, it’s going to hurt.*  Realization that survival is key in such untamed terrain is simultaneously an uneasy and thrilling thought.  But isn’t that always the way it goes in a peepshow?

Ah yes, the peepshow.  Entertaining animals who would feast on the spectacle of a woman at work, only this time, the animals are deer, rattlesnake, javelina, bobcat, scorpion.  I will truly be at the mercy of the land and its creatures.  Ultimately, this piece becomes about the artist’s surrender of control over her medium, since nature cannot be toppled.  Good.

Reinventing the peepshow is my curiosity.  Sounds dirty in the soil-less sense, but this piece in particular is actually dirty, filthy and sweaty from excavating the ground we walk on.  I’ve come to realize that the whole world is one peepshow right after another, fragmented and pieced together. Politically skewed soundbites, slightly parted curtains of neighbors, previews at the movie theatre, the view of the road through our glasses or windshields.  And as much as we think we see, we are always held at arm’s length from something.  As a friend so nimbly put it after seeing one of my more successful performances:  Everybody loves a peepshow.

Digging inside the earth and inhabiting that space denies description in favor of experience (which I highly recommend), but I’ll try.  In my perception, the shaving away of layers and years in glaciated sand and building a hole custom-fitted to the height and width of my body was like building a secret space which exists under the sandcastle, set timeless in situ away from the populace, yet on public display.  I tend to do work involving some performed action which puzzles the audience as to why anyone would want to do… that. Why I call my peepshows “grotesques” is because, as in Southern Gothic literature traditions, the hero/ine is heavily flawed, having highly cringe-worthy traits while still somehow eliciting the sympathies of the audience.  And if I am not similarly flawed, especially when I am performing these repulsive/preposterous/comic feats, then I don’t know who is!  Catching a glimpse of the audience squirming yet smiling at my work is incredibly satisfying to me.  If I happen to succeed at inspiring a physical or emotional response from the audience, then that is my greatest reward.

What of the dig?  I have found digging to be meditative, repetitive, simple and arduous.  It breaks through the boundaries of portrayal of an action straight into the true, the genuine, the honest-to-goodness action itself.  Movie magic can fake perspiration and blisters outwardly, but it is what I am actually physically feeling during and after such an undertaking that I am most intrigued by.  Instead of “pretending” that this is hard work, it truly is!  That physical ache from a job well done ultimately has the power to change the piece. If, for example, this trench is much more difficult than I am anticipating and I can pull through it without getting hurt*, the result of such strain will be obvious and will change my posture, how I hold the shovel, how much rest I take between digs, even my facial expressions.  Authenticity seems hard to come by these days, and so, as an artist seeking her medium, I pursue it headlong, undaunted by doing things the hard way.

* Disclaimer: This Concentric Trench piece is an exercise in physical (and, I’m sure, mental) endurance and, yes, some might say impossibility, though I don’t believe that to be true.  In no way do I mean to intentionally harm myself, nor is this a masochistic or fetishistic action.  In fact, I’ve been going to the YMCA to beef up so that I don’t hurt myself.  No health insurance, man.  Prevention is everything!  Cheers!