Inside the Spin-Mosaic Studio

Art Class is where I first tasted failure. I was not alone. To his credit, the art teacher shared his distaste for elephants equally.

Instead of a full ruined meal, like a burnt lasagna, each student in the class was served a failure h'orderve in small bites during each class--never enough to make you full (or quit); just enough to infuriate, not satiate. I had cleverly stayed under the radar for too long. Today, was my turn. 

When our classroom teacher announced it was time to put our books away and line up for Art class, the transition was strategically slow every week. Feet scuffled slowly. Eventually, we all meandered into line with semi-somber baby faces.

Failure did not taste like vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry. It tasted like diced canned carrots. It felt like hot plastic upholstery in the back seat of a car on the hottest dog-days of an August summer before air conditioning (1970's!). The flavor of carrots and the sting of hot plastic were the worst things I could think of at age 7. 

I liked to draw. I didn't like it that drawing in his class made me think about carrots and plastic.

The ladies at church told me my big brown eyes looked like my mother's. My mother was also an Artist.

One of my life missions is to always spell the word Artist with a capital "A" wether it is grammatically correct or not. 

The long rectangular Art tables were set up front-to-front and end-to-end. Half the class was in my table group facing each other. If I had set my room up like this in my Art classroom 20 years later, it would have been for the sake of mutual inspiration. Not here.

The huge table groups were stationed like docked ships. The art teacher strolled behind our shoulders, leaned over with his thick red pencil and made adjustments to our work. On this day, we were supposed to be drawing "correct anatomical faces." We were told to put aside our amateur stick figures and begin the face shape by drawing a large elongated egg.

Neither I nor anyone else knew the meaning of the word, "amateur" or "elongated". Remember 2nd grade? If a word had not been introduced in a spelling unit, it may as well be in another language.

The closest word I knew to amateur, was the word am-azing? The closest word I knew to elongated was, el-ephant? The start of my elongated face looked more like an amazing elephant.

I was a good girl. Insanely shy. And, didn't like to make waves. Ever.

The steps of my art teacher circled the room like a bird of prey. I always felt like one of the bowls of porridge found by Goldilocks in the fairytale of the 3 bears: too this, too that, but never good enough.

I didn't hear him coming when his red-pencil swooped down over my shoulder. "Start over!" he said. By time he walked away to continue his rounds, a big red "X" was slashed across the heart of my elephant that extended from one corner of the paper to the other.

For a little girl who didn't like making waves, a real elephant could have surfed on the waves I felt streaming from the eyes of my friends as they looked my way. My brown eyes looked down, down, down. 

Until that elephant-moment, I never believed I wasn't an artist. 

My mother was an artist. I had colored in my coloring books at her ankles while she painted in her basement studio. She let me use her muddy leftover palette to paint on newspapers when she was done. 

"You are a little Artist!" she would say. I believed her. In my mind, she spelled Artist with a capital A.

Art, Music, and Writing should all be spelled with capital letters bolder than the capital letter grades given in a class that is supposed to embody their spirit. 

Capital letters contain a sacred creed: something that cannot be X-ed out or interpreted by anyone but the writer by whose pen the poem is composed, the artist whose pencil scratches the 1st lead mark of a raw idea, or the musician whose larynx hums the vibrations of the 1st note in a fresh composition the world has never heard.

"F".

My art teacher did not spell Artist with a capital A. He spelled Amateur with a capital A.

My elephant couldn't breathe through her trunk because he had turned the paper upside down with a slap to the table. I reached over, slid my elephant towards my heart, and flipped her back over...after he walked away. 

How could I go home after school and tell my mother the awful news? How could I tell her that I was not an artist after all? 

------

Please. Open. Your. Art. Box.

Take out. Your. Pencil. Eraser. And. Pencils-of-Color.

I then put my hands down at my sides and scanned the creatively-waiting faces of my 2nd-grade art students. From the light switch, to the colorful bulletin boards full of artwork, to the windows overlooking the playground, to the tables grouped in front of the kiln room, sink area, white board, and back around to the light switch, all eyes were happily waiting.

No shuffling. No meandering. No semi-somber faces.

My students have told me that I have this thing I do with only one eyebrow that lifts when I am about to say, "Go." That's what they were watching for.

My hands clasped together and quickly spelled the last word of my message in American Sign Language. "Go."

This was his cue. A curly-haired boy in Amish suspenders, black boots, and hearing aides on either side of his pink cheeks clicked the light switch off and then on to signal the start of another happy class of creative activity. Students scrambled to get their supplies at the flip of his hand on the switch.

Sign language was his first language; innate to his mind and his hands. He looked forward to this gift of advantage in each once-a-week Art class as I listed in silence needed supplies.

From my pocket, I pulled out a little slip of folded paper I had prepared ahead of time. My standing posture bent low as my hand held it out in the direction of my light-switch helper. The sentence he read ended in a question mark.

The class watched me. Then, they watched him. With fingers together, he raised his arm to his nose and motioned downward as if his hand were surfing on a wave. I nodded. For 3 seconds we held a secret together. 

"Thank you, Class! Well done. Today, we are going to learn to draw..." And, I mimicked the word I had just asked him to teach me in sign language, though I already knew it.

"An elephant! Your elephant can be any color or pattern you want, even stripes or polka dots."

The class could hardly contain their excitement. Feet wiggled under the chairs. Whispered giggles shared ideas that were each bigger and brighter than the last.

A hand raised, "Can my elephant have antlers?" 

I smiled with a memory, "That would be an Amazing Elephant...with a capital A!".

I leaned over to open the windows. The sound of happy children on the playground mixed with the sound of happy children in the Art Room. As I did, the faint smell of diced canned carrots and the sting of hot back-seat plastic aphoulstry that had lingered for years wafted out the window that day, and never returned.