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Summer Quarter Essay — May 2003

Passing It On
by Andrew Rush   ©2003

This summer we continue to develop a new outreach area at The Drawing Studio with two intensive courses in art practice that are especially designed for the serious high school student (See The Art of Summer II).

Most of our courses and workshops offered at TDS are designed to introduce and support adults from all walks of life in the studio practices of art. Over the years, I have come to realize that much of what we offer could be considered remedial education--meaning that we are actually making up for what has been almost totally missing in early education, i.e., the distinction of visual intelligence itself, and how it is developed through drawing and the related studies of observation.

It is all well and good that The Drawing Studio is inspiring adults to the value of art, however late in life we may start. But what about our young people, whose experience of art learning, if any, is sporadic at best, often picked up in in overcrowded classes taught by hard-working public school art teachers, nobly struggling with underfunded or disappearing art budgets? What would it look like, I recently asked myself, if the practices of art were introduced and taught to young people with the kind of committment that is behind the teaching of reading skills, science or math? Actually, I have personal experience of what happens to children who grow up surrounded by practice of the arts as an ordinary part of everyday life. My family and I have been residents of the Rancho Linda Vista art community for 35 years, where our kids, and now our grandchildren live surrounded by artists and art activity. Joe Rush (our songwriter musician son, now grown) recently wrote about his childhood years on 'the Ranch' as follows:

"I learned about art as a mundane practice from a number of adults, observing (them) by accident. It wasn't unusual to find grownups in their studios almost frozen, staring at random-looking arangements of drawings or weird objects, or just looking out the window. Even as a nine year old I figured out that they were seeing possiblities, projecting into the future and imagining what might go next. Many people don't understand because it doesn't look like most jobs, but I saw it every day all over the Ranch and never thought it was mysterious. I just accepted it as a necessary part of creativity".

Rancho Linda Vista was a huge influence in my first vision of The Drawing Studio because it taught me that while 'creativity' can be touched upon in a classroom as a concept, its essence can only be passed along and nourished by hanging out with other people who do it, over time . Coursework alone is not enough without an environment that encourages daily contact, practice,conversation and relationship with other artists and their ways of working. As we keep trying to make clear, TDS is not exactly a school, it is a collaborative effort to maintain the conditions--a 'garden if you will--for passing on the essence of the creative life.

In the visual culture we live in, most young people are very connected to images these days, maybe even more so than many adults. But their connection is mostly very passive. As pointed out in my Spring essay about visual literacy, teen-agers are massive consumers of images in the form of film, TV, internet and fashion marketing. What is missing is the active relationship with how and where images come from, which is rooted in the fundamentals of art as learned by practice and by interacting with other artists.

So we are making a start with our young people's program,The Art of Summer II. We will have a lot to learn, but we must start in the spirit of TDS which is not just about teaching young people, but including them in the environment of the whole garden. To do this well, we need a lot of help in the form of advice, scholarships, and promoting and spreading the word to the kids who are ready to work at a higher level of artistic intensity.

Finally, some bald advice to every associate and artist reading this: Include the children in your life in your art. Show them how you draw or paint; sit down and draw with them; give them good art materials for birthdays; take them with you to art shows and artists studios; encourage them to keep a sketchbook, to make their own greeting cards, to draw their stories. Then take a frequent interest in their efforts.

Not long ago my granddaughter Heather (now in college) wrote a school essay about her first experience of drawing when she was six years old:

"Our drawing sessions became our evening ritual. I would sit on my grandfather's lap, peering out between his arms, watching him draw. One day...with a surge of confidence, I picked up the pencil when he passed it to me. As he watched, I began to sketch the mountains and the desert that I could see from the window.....I will cherish forever my memories of him and our closeness during those evening lessons."

Pass it on. Treasures await.

©2003 Andrew Rush. May not be copied or reproduced in any form without permission