Art, but for children
Hi.
This series continues again, finally. October was just last week, no? Oh, for Pete's sake.
Let’s start with a sort of apology. I must issue two corrections for previous newsletters. One, my first sleepover friend was named Roger, not Keith.
Second, the birthday party at which I first ate guacamole was for someone whose name was, according to my 1988-89 yearbook, “Teiea” not “Tara." Actually, that's probably a typo on the editorial staff's part. Nevermind.
A recent foray into thinking deeply, critically, about my creative life and interests led me to uncover some unfortunate realizations about my childhood art experiences. In short: my formal art education in school was a strange mix of encouraging and eviscerating. I’ll try to explain.
I was not a particularly inspired child when it came to the visual arts. For most of second grade, our homeroom teacher would read aloud to us a chapter or so a day from Beverly Cleary novels. Mrs Roll was fine with us doodling during this time, which I suppose kept our little hands busy. I drew the same scene every day with Prang crayons on a blank page: a train, really just the locomotive, pulling into “Birmingham Station” (according to the carefully lettered, but sloppily drawn, sign) under a bright yellow sun, and a lone house in the background. My family hasn’t kept any of these iterations, but I can say it’s one of the strongest sense memories I have for that period. In a word, it’s repetitive. I wasn’t necessarily trying to refine any aspect of the scene or experiment with technique, just draw the same thing day in and day out. Around the same time, we started having “specials” at school: art, music, gym. Our art teachers alternated their presence in that room, Mrs Farrell and Mrs Casper. (I'm using real names here! Wow!) Projects and units were continuous: if you started something on a Tuesday and came back on Friday, even if the teachers had switched, you were still working on the same thing. But the guidance was split: Mrs Farrell was gentle and encouraging, while Mrs Casper came across as strict. There were no participation trophies here, nor any technical trainings. Either you did well in Mrs Casper’s eyes or you weren’t cut out to make art, and your grades reflected your situation. Let’s say it together out loud: “This is young children we’re talking about.”
A parallel split affected me in middle school. My sixth grade art teacher, Mr Maxwell, was a breath of fresh air. He wanted us all to feel creative and empowered. Every few weeks, we had to turn in a “portfolio” for him of works we created outside of class. There were no real guidelines, just, make something and show it off. I went on a family trip to Long Island one weekend and remembered halfway through that I needed to put together a portfolio by Monday morning. Luckily, I had a small camera and some film at my disposal. On a gray October day, my parents and their friends took us to a beach along the Sound. I shot a dozen or so photos of waves crashing into the sand, and then begged my mom to drop off the film at Wegmans for 1-hour processing as soon as we returned to town. I slapped them on a poster board with scotch tape and went to school on Monday, slightly embarrassed by what I’d put together, but grateful it was done. Mr Maxwell didn’t love the skewed composition and drab colors, but he appreciated that I’d worked beyond my usual comfort zone when it came to my subject and technique. The following year, I had a different teacher, Mr Wasser, an older and generally grumpier guide. He was a tyrant when it came to 12 year olds using markers to express themselves. Let’s say it together out loud again: “This is young children we’re talking about.” One project was to build a house out of paperboard and draw on it. I did that. It wasn’t pretty. But it was done. He awarded me 65 out of 100 points for it. I was on the cusp of adolescence and I was barely passing art class. The next year, I luckily landed in a class with Mr Maxwell again. At one point, he encouraged me to submit an Egyptian-tomb-inspired watercolor I made to the district art show. I thought he was kidding and being mean about it, and I told him as such. He looked at me like I had insulted him. “No, I’m serious, Neil, this is really good, let’s submit it.” I did well in the art show, punching above my weight, thanks to his encouragement, but the damage was done. Mr Wasser and Mrs Casper had made me doubt myself too many times.
I don’t have a big ol’ lesson to tie all that up with, but parts of it were always on the surface for me over the intervening years, and other parts bubbled up in some self-exploration in 2021. It's all very strange to look back at. Kids. Making art. Seriously?
Below you’ll find brief summaries, as you’re probably used to now, of my July to September 2021. You laughed after you read that number, and that’s okay. That’s the right reaction.
Reading:
Presumably in July I read things, but I made no coherent notes about what they were. Maybe they weren’t worth sharing. Later in the summer, I read two essays in The New Yorker that stood out to me. Ann Patchett wrote about airplane safety. David Sedaris wrote about his father’s dying and the language people use around death. In two days on a beach I read Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau, who once taught me class about fiction and poetry. (File under: encouraging art teachers; see also, teachers whom I interact with on social media)
September got me back into work-reading-mode a bit, including a curious piece about how to be a polite listener and a description of different kinds of conflict. I think regularly about these articles and would love to discuss them with you.
Eating:
In July I apparently ate “meatballs” of some sort (great job, Neil’s notes!) and worthy pizza from Emmy Squared finally.
We did a big takeout order from Hardena at some point in August, which I balanced with back-to-back meals from White House Subs in Atlantic City. September brought me back to the home kitchen: Ottolenghi’s bulgur salad with mushrooms were a star lunch choice. I also did something with urfa biber and chicken thighs (I wish I knew more about this!), and for a group dinner I leaned on my favorite combination of garlic-tomato rice plus black pepper tofu. The latter combo is a great veganish meal that's a crowd-pleaser every time.
Beating:
Summer music always comes through for me in a mix of new gems and old standbys. I spent a few days in July exploring the Pickin On bluegrass cover series and giving the Grateful Dead’s Grayfolded my first 21st-Century listen. New music from The Bul Bey and The Kleptones buoyed my mood for the entire season. I made a throwback party playlist for a road trip to see friends, and dare I say, it slaps. The end of July brought the start of my longlost habit of downloading the latest Phish shows, in anticipation of seeing them for a spectacular night on the Atlantic City beach. I needed that. September had me digging out old CDs from a black CaseLogic binder: Massive Attack’s Mezzanine, a mix I made called Table Manners, The Flaming Lips’ Soft Bulletin, and Alarm Will Sound covering Aphex Twin. I streamed mixes from my colleague Kyle HIller and thought a lot about Colin Hay and David Holmes. A playlist that skewed my Spotify year-end roundup was the Autumn Equinox mix from Aquarium Drunkard.
Deleting:
A bad Monday night of rainy flooding led to a week of flood-related problems in our basement, so, uh, yeah, I got rid of a lot of things this summer. I’ve also been trying to give stuff away on our local Buy Nothing, and it’s a reminder that people will take all sorts of things off your hands, with minimal effort except the nightmare of communicating about scheduling!!!! I also spent an afternoon clearing ephemera from my childhood basement: soccer team photos, musty science fair project reports, yearbooks, and a novella or two.
Retreating:
Kelsey and I hiked around Bellevue State Park in Delaware and it was… fine? Oddly overlapping with corporate campuses and highways? My college guys collectively known as The Doug, all vaccinated, reunited in suburban New York for beers and Marvel movies and grilling. Kelsey & I & her family went down the Shore, as we do each year. Kelsey and I took a few days in September to explore the Adirondacks and specifically to ride rail-bikes, HIGHLY RECOMMEND. In September, I started with my friend Pam Selle the process of The Artist’s Way, a course I’d heard about for a long time but never really understood. I kinda get it now. If nothing else it helped me pinpoint some of my harshest critics in my youth!!!
Meeting:
I performed with The N Crowd a few times, including in person. Joe Wendrychowicz had me play on his fun mediation improv podcast, Fair Deal. I hosted several episodes of the First Person Arts podcast, #US - Unique and Shared Experiences. And my pal Ryan T Barlow and I were guests on Hey! Let Me Ask You Something, a podcast about challenges and solutions. We even said some clever things!
So, how was your summer? And, hey, how's the formatting for these messages look on your end?
Neil