art/vision/voice - Maryland Institute College of Art

54 art / vision / voice
Since the first day I started teaching at Xavier, I realized that,
first of all, there is no formula for doing any of this. There are
a bunch of individuals that you can either deal with or you can
mis-educate by using formulas. There’s no way to teach individuals
collectively. So either you’re willing to take the time to understand
the needs or you’re not.
I think talent is nothing more than having a bent toward doing
something so you’re going to spend a lot of time with it. . . . Part
of the job that I see at the university level is exposing people to this
language [of visual art], making that language relate back to what
they know. That’s where the individual improvisation comes in.
A big part of my job is teaching that student the responsibility
of holding up his end of the job. It’s creating a contract. It’s creating
responsibility. I wouldn’t pass my mother if she didn’t do the work,
and [Richard’s] known that since Day One. The point is we have a
responsibility to this community, to our immediate community and
to the global community. This is what we say we’re doing. We have
to find a way to do it. I think every student who walks in that door
has to realize that this [education] is not a right, it’s a privilege.
richard And so to get them to become conscious of mastering their
subjects, you have to create that contract sometimes between the
parents, the student, and the teacher. It’s in that relationship that real
learning happens. I tell every kid, forget about the cd players, tell Mom
and Dad that I want a room where I can put an easel for Christmas.
I want some canvas for my birthday. I say that you have to buy into
your gift, buy into your interest, buy into your talent, and own it.
john I think in art, it’s hard to go in a classroom and teach drawing
when you don’t know drawing. Kids will see through that in a
heartbeat. And if a kid says, “how do you do that?” you don’t sit there
and hand them a bunch of political b.s. about talent and expression
and stuff. What is drawing composed of—shapes, lines, positions,
et cetera. You have to be able to break it down just as if you were
a chemist. . . . Kids want to know, they want to understand, and you
have to make it interesting.
richard [John Scott] was the kind of teacher that if you didn’t have
a tool or couldn’t afford to buy a tool, he would make it for you.
So, I still have a tool that he made for me that I will always hold on to.
Or he may come along and draw in your sketchbook to show you
what he’s talking about.