ART

Should not be taught.

Mechanisms for creating art, OK, I can buy that, but showing someone how to draw a friggin' still life just sucks. I so would rather see whatever it is that poor student would've come up with out of his or her own funky head. Even if a pear in a bowl ended up looking like Telly Savalas in a hot tub, I would prefer it. Let me see what YOU want to do, not what someone told you is "the right way." It's ART, not laser-assisted microsurgery. That, should be taught.

The best professor I ever had was a guy named Ernie Porps. There I sat in a huge lecture hall in Art 101 with every freshman idiot wanting to take an easy core class, and he comes in and tells us we will NOT MAKE ANY ART AT ALL here. !!??, I went. WOO HOO!, went the frat boys. He spent the semester talking about what art really is, which is a unique representation of how any one person sees the world or imagines something to be or even just a feeling, something intangible. As the weeks rolled by, the class, this giant lump of goofballs and business majors and tired work/study overachievers and me, fell in love with the guy. The discussions became truly thoughtful, lively, inspiring, fun, sometimes poignant, always interesting. We made no art, but came to think that art was in us all, and that was a terribly important and awesome thing. On the last day of class, Ernie Porps got a spontaneous standing ovation that seemed to go on quite a long time.

The main thing I remember Ernie saying was that most people completely stop making any kind of art at all by the time they are around 11 years old, because they begin to believe they are not any good at it. How many things have you shut off in your life because you aren't "good enough?" Granted, if you are blind, please do not drive. Your eyes aren't good enough, sorry 'bout that one. But you get what I am saying.

I would be terribly pleased if you made some kind of art again, like you used to, or like you always wanted to. Telly Savalas in a hot tub would look fantastic framed on my desk.