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| 1960 en plein air Humbug Creek donated to Oregon State Fish Hatchery and Research Center |
If nationwide we do not support the arts and education, Muller would work to mae the arts a working part of the college's and the Portland public's culture.
As secretary I recorded our ideas for a mission statement. Guided by Muller, we declared that we wanted to create bridges between the many academic departments at the college and the greater Portland public. The gallery would be in the student center in a highly visible hall leading to the caffeteria. Students would curate pieces from the college including revolving exhibits that would be shipped to the college from afar. Jim Hibbard, a new instructor to the art department, also stepped up to help especially when we received traveling exhibits. He helped uncrate and then repackage delicate artwork. He also lectured to his elementary education students in the White Gallery.
All my Portland State College Courses and the White Gallery experiences impacted 55 years of my art choices
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| A demonstration at Corvallis Art Guild Clothesline Sale in the year, 2000 from a visit to Humbug Creek 40 years after my plein air painting in 1960 Now hanging in the education room of the Oregon State Fish Hatchery and Research Center, it is one painting in a grouping showing a family's involvement recording artists' perspectives of the changes in Humbug Creek impacted by deforestation |
On another level what is in accord with my education is illustrated in these Humbug Creek paintings. They are an example of one of my public displays. These paintings in a fish hatchery along with my mother's demonstrates our involvement in Humbug Creek's change from a vital fishery, its demise and restoration. I like to point to them as a healthy family activity when I am teaching watercolor at the Research Center's Art Festival.
I am deeply sad that a classmate at Portland State College now speaks out against all education as being some brain washing machine stealing our freedom to see reality. I am sad that small colleges are shutting down.
I believe empowerment of our ability to see as an artist begins early. If we are taught to stop thinking our perceptions are valid as toddlers, we are forever susceptible to being deceived. My topic next week will be letters I wrote to the editor where I was calling out educators who were wrongly using art to stop children from trusting their own seeing and believing an authority. These teachers did not have the good sense art for elementary teachers taught by Portland State College's Robert Colescott or Jim Hibbard.
9 comments:
I think your friend is reacting to what has happened to higher education many places where it is using subjects in political ways with an agenda to turn the students in the direction the instructor wants. It's happened to a lot of education where it becomes a political tool. Sad, but that does not negate your experience before that happened. AND it means be alert and aware of what we are being told and where it is heading as a lot has an agenda. It does not make higher education of no value if someone has their own philosophy and does not allow someone supposedly superior to dictate what they must think. Go places these days knowing who you are and what you believe and be sure you don't let yourself be manipulated without knowing it's happening.
"Don't let yourself be manipulated without knowing it's happening." Pretty tall expectation given since childhood we have been told and accepted such falsehoods as the sky is blue and leaves are green.
It's a falsehood that the sky appears blue? That's the equivalent of political manipulation by a trusted figure? I suspect though that kids today are a little more cynical than the more easily earlier generations were. I didn't think my parents knew it all though. Did you about yours?
The question here is not whether the sky is blue or not but the point is a child's power to observe for themselves and not be swayed to think they are not able to observe for themselves. I wonder if such training prepares them to accept untruth. It discourages curiosity. Lost is the joy and freedom to have your own opinions. Lost is self confidence to believe in your own perception. It is not easy to see color and requires study for most of us if we take up plein air painting as adults with prvious cultual misstraining. The sky is not just blue. When it is in truth at noon on a clear day many colors. It is a mixture of many hues from cool at the horizon to warmer at the zenith.
In answer to your question, did I believe my parents. My mother had an art degree from the University of California in Berkeley in 1934. he supported me when I disagreed with my school teachers on art related perceptions. I very much liked the way my Portland State College art professors nurtured our expressing our own perceptions and opinions on design and color.
I raised my kids to think for themselves and was raised that way myself; so cannot relate to the idea that to tell the child what you observe is to limit them from looking for themselves. I do think I learned ethics from my parents though. Was that limiting me to believe to lie is bad?
What you said there makes me think you believe parents should tell their children nothing and hope they find the right words for themselves?
Rain,
Thanks for your probbing questions. Off and on I have been thinking about my childhood. On observing nature they have high marks but when it came to questioning my father on his past there was a wall. I never considered asking him details about his birth on the international date line in a ship. He always led me to believe he was Swiss while it was probably clear to some of my friends who asked if I was Jewish. And disbelieved me when I said I had family in Israel but they were not Jewish. I could not believe my straight as an arrow father could lie on anything.
Well, on your father... I am of a belief that parents have a right to have their own story for their lives and not sure children have a right to know it all. I can see why ones ethnic heritage would be more than a minor secret but it was probably something he saw as either dangerous or not relevant to your life since you were not Jewish based on the religious beliefs of Judaism.
On teaching children the color they see in the sky is blue-- when it is, I think later one can explain why. Small children get one answer and older ones another. They are both true but just age appropriate. A lot is that way for information.
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