Sept. 12 Exit Slip - Art in the Garden

"Sorry, I'm not creative." 

This quotation (and variations of it) is something I have said countless times in my life. If I look back, it was around the 6th grade that I began to find Art as a school subject uncomfortable and actually anxiety-inducing. In the 8th grade, Art was a mandatory "elective" and I was filled with dread and frustration by this. Of course, these feelings were made worse by the fact that the work we produced was graded. Rather than coping with this idea of a skill I needed to work on, I framed art as a waste of time.

So somewhere in my previous schooling and/or socialization, math and art were positioned at odds. As I began to identify myself with academia, particularly math and science, I saw myself in contrast to the common traits of the artist. I didn't (and in many ways still don't) see myself as creative, free-spirited, or inventive. How limiting!

It wasn't until my first year at university, where I had to do some serious mental gymnastics on a MATH 100 final exam, that I thought, "Wow, that took some serious creative problem-solving." I still struggle with the idea of perceiving myself as a creative person. I do have some skill deficits -- I struggle with visualization and spatial processing, I can be very impatient, and I don't like being bad at things. But these are not impenetrable barriers, they are muscles that need to be stretched and strengthened.

The meditative effect of sketching in the garden today cannot be denied. I was totally engrossed in the process and had no thoughts aside from the task before me. Surprisingly, I found the manmade objects more difficult to draw. While I thought their straight lines and right angles would be simple to draw, their precise nature could not be captured by my unpracticed artist's hand. Therefore the sort of wild, chaos of nature was much easier for me to capture because I was not focused on precision, I was focused on essence. Sure, leaves don't look like the scribbles on my paper, but that's what they felt like to me when I was drawing

As I get more comfortable with drawing and artistic expression myself, I can definitely see myself integrating this into the classroom. Especially when the content of the art is not the subject of assessment. I also thought the task was just guided enough to get everyone focused while still allowing for choice.