I spent a very blustery day yesterday at Storm King, being scolded by an art historian, getting my giant sculpture groove on. It was an amazing place with a very interesting history. If you are looking for an artsy (super kid friendly or not) day trip I highly recommend it. Although you will have to wait until the spring as it closes on November 13th. Sorry for the tease.
Why am I telling you this, other than to prove I get out and see stuff too? Imagine walking under a giant rectangle being precariously suspended by another giant rectangle 7 feet off the ground in the middle of a huge meadow. You see this and have to ask yourself "why?".
We could tell that 1000s of people had done what we were doing, standing under the suspended cube cringing and reaching, for a fun photo op. We laughed and poured over the photos later. Fun really is a predominant theme of the center. When you ask yourself the over all "why" of Storm King I think it is readily apparent unlike the "why" behind many of the artworks.
I don't remember having the opportunity to ask "why" in high school. I remember my first philosophy class in college and all it was was "why". I loved it! I'm one of those people who can't remember facts and detail unless I have a relationship with them and that relationship is born of "why". If I don't have the why there is no logical place in my brain to store the information. It just gets ejected, like so many 80s casingles, even though I may need the reference later. I'm pretty sure this is one of the reasons why I went from being a typical C student, doing just enough to get by, to a Dean's List college student. It was all about the "why" for me. Frankly, it still is.
Why did I become an art teacher? It is sort of thrown around in those earlier paragraphs but the story is kind of a sweet one so I'll tell it here. The 3rd grade curriculum in the late 70s must have had a unit about careers. We were asked what we wanted to be when we grew up and then had to figure out a way to try that career out for a week. Most kids picked something that their parents did and followed them to work one day. I'm not really sure where the thought originated but I decided I wanted to be an art teacher like Mrs. Goodrich our elementary school art teacher. She was an old bat. I'm not kidding. She wore long skirts and orthopedic shoes with short steel-wool hair and glasses. I know she was just counting down to retirement. If I had to guess, I'd say she hated her job. I LOVED her! She had the goods! She had markers, and crayons in lots of colors, and contact paper in all sorts of shiny fun. Glue, not paste, and yarn I could cut however I liked. I don't remember a single project but I remember getting goose-bumps listening to her squeaky cart rolling down the hallway getting closer and closer to my kindergarten classroom. (My kindergarten teacher had us in the palm of her hand!) If one person could inspire such joy in me I wanted to be that person in my future!
That was how it all started. 4 year old Annie sitting on the kindergarten carpet with her green-shirt and goose-bumps over Mrs. Goodrich's art supplies. It wasn't that she was a great teacher, it wasn't a trip to France to look at art, it wasn't a need to teach the world to think outside the box. (I hate that phrase.) It was the pure joy of creating and the need to offer that joy of creation with others that made me want to become an art teacher.
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