Art for...My Sake

When I was a kid my mood swings changed with the wind or a sneeze, and so my parents called me Cybil – behind my back. As I grew up, my moods continued to ebb and flow, but then high school entered the picture and my parents were doomed; teenage angst bit me in the butt. On my way to school, I hid in my oversized hoodie and moped around to Dashboard Confessional. I was convinced no one understood me and that life would be so much easier if I were a grown up. After all, grown ups didn’t have to go to school and deal my fourth period class, Arts and Society.

            Ms. Sturdavent was the quintessential art history teacher. She dressed in black and she pushed her dark curly hair behind her thick black glasses. She grew up a dancer (naturally) forcing her to glide across the room while she lectured. Ms. Sturdavent lived for the Renaissance and the Rococo, and although I grew up dancing, my black belt in Tae Kwon Do trumped ballet and Botticelli. I stared at the clock waiting for her to turn on the lights and give us our evening assignment. I spent most of my time drawing on the handouts believing that art would come naturally as I did well in all other humanities. And then I practically failed my first test. Shit.

            I dragged myself to tutoring and laid it out: “Listen, I want an A in this class. It’s art for crying out loud. I can’t have it messing up my GPA.” My tutor didn’t buy my emotional adolescence crap. Instead, she glared right back at me: “You need to care and until you do, you will not raise your grade.” I grabbed my walkman and stormed out of her room. Cybil had left the building.

            That night I stared at my art texts for hours. My eyes darted around the room, my glance jumping from sketch to sketch crafted by my talented Uncle Ron. My Mom and Uncle Ron both had the creative “eye”. Together they could piece together a fresh centerpiece or dismantle and then reconstruct an entire room. They measure lighting, depth and functionality. To them, art was a creative expression, and they succeeded because they cared about each angle and every focal point. Life was captured in art, art was influenced by life. I let out a huge sigh and turned to the chapter on chiaroscuro.  

            Fast forward ten years – now I’m the one donning all black and eccentric reading glasses. The halls of my workplace are decorated with art and soon our offices will move into a museum. And now I care about the art, not about getting the A.

            This past weekend my best friend and I toured the new Mint Museum in Uptown Charlotte. The Museum hosted a free opening leaving its doors open for 24 hours straight. Museum clientele lined the doorways of the new Mint greeting each visitor with a smile and a map. Kids weaved in and out of the Museum’s art galleries and live music traveled up the stairway and out onto the balcony. My friend and I lost sight of each other and wandered around each gallery. American art met European art and woodwork led into glasswork. People snapped pictures with their smart phones and digital cameras, and I peered at them both bewildered and annoyed. To me, interacting with art is a very personal experience. Too often I think that we got caught up trying to take the symmetrical picture that we forget to acknowledge the essence of a piece. In trying to contain and to possess we neglect to look, to see, to think. How in the world did the kid that didn’t give a damn about art in high school all the sudden turn into an art snob? I don’t know. Perhaps now I care too much. Or maybe that’s not it at all.

            I think what Ms. Sturvadent taught me is that life is art. There is the art of learning and the art of lying. Everything has a layers; from concertos to chocolate-covered cookies, French art to friendship. Music can be Mozart or the purr of a Maserati on a desolate city street. In each moment you, like any artist, can be creative and restorative. You can snap the picture of the still or stand still, see and search.

            At 25 I am still moody, and I am still waiting to grown up and get it all together – whatever that means. But I guess now I understand that like each brushstroke each moment is fleeting and that if I try to take the picture I will never fully appreciate the exact moment.