Checking in

Just finished checking in with a Grad Student who is teaching the second section of Painting to Non-Majors this summer. He showed me his course outline. Every thrusday is a crit and a movie. Ending the week with a film about an artist who is not clasically trained but who works with prolific abandonment.

I was thinking about this as a strategy for my students, becoming a stickler to mamouth amounts of drawing, reworking, revisiting etc. I thought about a teacher a few years back who made students draw one object for an entire semester, on one sheet of paper, every day. Something liberating about that notion. Something about a singular focus, and breathtaking sense of discovery through knowing something so well. I was thinking about my sketch books from back in High School. Man those things were amazing. Why did I stop working like that. Why did I stop drawing all the time, and get so tight, loose my sense of abandonment and be happy with my mistakes. Why did I have to have everything so precious and good and well concieved that all the time I am trapped in a fear spiral?

I don't want to have my students ever say my course is too academic. I want to teach with the ideas of DADA and Fluxus, strictly demanding craft conducive to the message, but fostering excitement and drive. I want to get my idealism back and I want it back today!