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Summer Quarter Essay — May 2008 Never Too Old to Learn - Meditations on Art and Aging by Andrew Rush   ©2008 “With age, art and life become one.” (Georges Braque)

 

Never Too Old to Learn—Meditations on Art and Aging

One night in 1940 when I was nine, I hid myself deep under my covers and tried to imagine what it would be like to be dead. It was quickly too scary to stay with that thought for very long, so I then meandered to wonder if I would be alive in the next century. Probably not, I concluded, since the year 2000 was science fiction, much too far in the future for a nine year old to hold for very long. Yet here we are, it is 2008, and I am alive and upright, a scarred but still standing survivor of life’s chance encounters with disease, war and car accidents.

I don’t think about my age all that much, blessed as I am with useful work as an artist and teacher, and imbedded in the company of family and good friends. Except when I look in the mirror, where I definitely see one of the ‘old ones’. Or when a covey of teenagers passes me on the street, deeply absorbed in their chatter and cellphones with hardly a glance at anyone outside their tribe, and I am reminded of the many ways we ‘old ones’ are either invisible or avoided by the culture of youth. Nevertheless it is we ‘old ones’ who provide the majority of audiences and applause for all the eager young would-be performers, artists or athletes, as we dutifully attend the many school plays, exhibits, and soccer games of our children and grandchildren. It is these same invisible ‘old ones’ who remember their birthdays, send the appropriate gifts and appreciations on the occasions of graduation, school honors, and first performances. And nowadays (as we invisible old ones say), unless there is an old-fashioned parent in the wings to remind the young of minimal family etiquette, even thank-you notes are rare, which makes the point.

Later, after the children have grown into the young new professional performers and artists, there we are again, still the audience, filling the theaters and music halls, the museums and galleries with our white or blue hair and our bald heads fringed with grey, applauding their earnest performances or art work. As if that were not enough, we ‘old ones’ also provide the largest single pool of financial gifts, memberships, and volunteer hours, those generous transfusions of life blood that keep our leanly subsidized arts organizations alive.

As one of the invisible audience of ‘old ones,’ I have to say it is a mixed bag. On the one hand it shows the depth of our love for our children however oblivious they may be about the long view. On the other, one can get pegged into a role, even into assuming one’s own absolute need to keep creating and learning is somehow to be set aside.

When I began The Drawing Studio at the age of sixty, and before we began working with teens seven years ago, I estimated that more than half of our students were over 55, many over 65. And what has been obvious along the way is that not only can ‘the old ones’ (many of whom began their first art studies with us) learn as well as anyone else, their progress toward mastery is not only inspiring but ongoing. They just keep getting better. Some are producing works of such professional caliber that we invite them onto our staff as new teaching artists and tutors, while others have full contemporary art careers.* Indeed our ‘old ones’ verify what one senior artist reports, “I have no age when I walk into my studio. Age gets left behind out there, along with the daily dishes and the dust balls.”**

Three years ago, inspired by the work of our older TDS artist associates, we conceived and designed a modest program to send art tutors into residential senior homes and centers in order to offer our studio courses to those who could not come to us, by reason of disability or economics. This year, with the help of some small but new funding gifts, we have 16 tutors, many of them seniors themselves, conducting these new programs at 10 senior sites throughout Tucson, under the guidance of an extraordinary teaching artist, Pat Dolan. First reports from Pat’s tutors reflect their own amazement at the eagerness of their ‘old ones’ to learn art skills. (Elsewhere in this newsletter is more specific information about this growing ‘Outreach Art Tutoring for Seniors’ (OATS) program.)

As a long time teaching artist, I am of course aware of many well-intentioned ‘arts & crafts’ programs directed at retirees in most communities. While many are fine programs, the underlying motive is often rooted in conventional assumptions about the learning limitations of old age, that is, designed as recreational pastime in nature.

However, research into aging is fast catching us up with new scientific evidence that validates what we observe in everyday practice at TDS: serious art learning contributes to the richness, mental health, and self-worth of all of our seniors, giving them a medium of community participation that can grow as long as breath continues. And even more to the point, our tutors directly experience the abilities of seniors with even the most severe disabilities to enter the practice of drawing, an opening that begins their journey of expression, like any other artist of any age.

At a time when we are opening new domains of learning available to the late years of life, TDS is also adding its first summer program for younger children from 9 to 12 years of age. As the educational founder of TDS, I am at last satisfied that we are planting the basic elements in place – a community of art learning associates, the resources of our teaching artists and tutors, and our expanded new home – that give us a foundation to better manifest our mission to bring art learning to all of our community at all ages and walks of life.

© 2008 Andrew Rush

* My memory will no doubt miss many, but I can mention some of our distinguished senior founding members like Barbara Kennedy and Rhoda Bier (both deceased), along with Sue Day, Midge Angevine, teaching artist Pat Marohn, and associates Deezie Manning-Catron, Barbara Porter, John Jeffries and Suzanne Bloomfield, along with recent exhibiting artists Acacia Alder and Emilia Arana.

** Cathy Fink.

©2008 Andrew Rush. May not be copied or reproduced in any form without permission