College started on Monday. The first week has been a fiasco. Though I entered the week with an optimistic and somewhat eager outlook, I've left it overwhelmed and frustrated. This elevated stress status was prodded ever upward by one particularly frustrating introductory encounter with the art department. The class : 3-D Design. We'd been instructed to bring foam core board, a bag of garbage and glue by a seemingly competent and enthusiastic instructor. Hopes were admittedly high. But my spirits sunk when direction came to "glue the garbage to the board in an artistic fashion." "A somewhat elementary project," I chided.
The included slideshow only amplified my frustration with the lecture. I'm an art enthusiast and normally defend those less-appreciated abstract pieces so openly criticized by ignoramuses. This however, was ridiculous. Scattered fragments of china, crumpled pieces of paper, and a dozen or so two-by-fours nailed arbitrarily together comprised the foundation of the presentation. The lecturer commenced to evaluate and analyze the works as one would a Michelangelo, Rembrandt or Dürer. "This guy was not concerned with negative space and focal points when he was making this," I thought, "He was thinking : If I nail these 5 boards together, I'll bet I can get some idiot to buy it for 3 million dollars." This is the kind of work my professor is expecting. This is the kind of work I can't appreciate, let alone create.
As I made my best attempt at the "garbage piece," (both literally and figuratively) I decided to take an alternative approach to the project, and alter the form of the foam board itself. The professor was making his observational rounds and promptly told me I was doing it wrong. If there's one thing I despise more than anything in the world, it's someone dictating the way I can and cannot create art. Years ago, while attending an art camp for talented elementary school kids, a teacher insisted that I darken the skin of an old fisherman figurine I modeled out of peach-colored Sculpey. I refused. The character was meant to be old, wrinkly, feeble . . . and pale. We fought it out. I'm not one for arguing with teachers . . . but I won.
The point is, art is the artist's prerogative, and should not be dictated by anyone else's reckonings (With the exception of environmental pertinency. Pornographic paintings would be inappropriate, if not downright ruinous, if hung in an elementary school, for instance). I realize that statement is in conflict with the entirety of paragraph two. But it's a humanistic right and privilege to form opinions on completed works. I did not advise the designer to make it differently, do it over, or change it per my perspective. Those guilty are the shameless squelchers of creativity. Including any art teacher who oversteps his bounds and designates expressive thinking as wrong.
