Rusty & Biscuit on a Walk, The Neighborhood Out the Window

Rusty and Biscuit On a Walk 8"x 6", pencil on paper

The Neighborhood Out the Window, 12" x 14", oil pastel on black paper

The Public Radio International podcast, To the Best of Our Knowledge, called "Creative Pairs" (March 27, 2011) is fascinating. It's description is as follows:

"Joshua Wolf Shenk has written a detailed analysis of the working relationship between the prolific and influential songwriting duo, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Lan Samantha Chang's novel follows the lives of students and one particular professor in a creative writing program in the Midwest. Joelle Biele describes what happened to Elizabeth Bishop's poems when they were submitted to The New Yorker. Ben Folds joined forces with Nick Hornby and collaborated on an album called Lonely Avenue."

The part featuring Lan Samantha Chang, the Director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and author of All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost has a couple quotes about studying writing (you can substitute "art") and entering it into the world. I've been doing a lot of writing lately so that added another dimension for me. She spoke with Steve Paulson who asked her if writing can be taught. Here's what she said:

"I think that talent cannot be taught. It can be encouraged. I don't think it's possible to bring everyone up to the same level of accomplishment. But I do think it's possible for a teacher to encourage students to do much, much better in a shorter amount of time than they would have if they hadn't studied."

"An artist's life is full of rejection and there is no way to get around it. I think that back in the day when this story is set it was par for the course that teachers would do some of the rejecting."

I've been through a rigorous MFA program, have won awards, exhibited in juried shows but I've also had plenty of rejection. I know the graduate school experience did for me just what Chang describes. Teachers do push your back to the wall, make you turn yourself inside out in order to find the place from which to make art with integrity. The critic/teachers can smell a bullshitter a mile away. I've been writing a lot lately and it's funny because my MFA is in painting but I'm crossing into an area in which I'm almost self-taught. I will reach out to others who have experience in writing and in that way receive some of the mentoring teachers provide but I'm sure it won't be the same as a graduate school critique. Brutal honesty isn't typically socially acceptable.

The two pictures I'm posting this week are a kind of mapping, trying to find one's way. There's a sense of feeling along not just seeing; forms aren't fully planted. The same place will look the same and different tomorrow. Honesty accepts doubt and flux. Stepping out of one's usual areas of strength really underscores uncertainty and change. We'll see what's around the corner and I might stop to hug my dogs on the way.