NOCCA pt5 - how it all ends
Monday, September 26, 2005
Mornings were for NOCCA Level 1 students, everyone else came in the afternoon. There was one girl who was Level 4 (started as a freshman), about 1/3 or so of the class was Level 3 students and the rest of us were Level 2.Most of the people from my Level 1 clique came back for Level 2, with the exception of a good friend of mine, Jessica Boudreaux, who graduated, and Louis Schmitt, who switched schools or something and wasn't able to come back. It was funny, though, because there was a guy named Brock who was a good friend of Louis', who was very much like Louis, and was admitted straight into Level 2. It was like Louis was still there, but he was black with a flat-top. Liz (of the purple hair) Barrios and Otis Shipman were still around.
There was a guy named Christian who also went to McMain and was one grade below me, but he'd started NOCCA as a freshman too, so he was in Level 3. He was a very talented kid from Ohio or something like that. His mom and he moved to New Orleans specifically so that he could go to NOCCA. Needless to say, his artistic pursuits were well supported as was his ego. The Grosses loved Christian and made no effort not to show it. Christian loved being loved. It's funny because i was friends with him, but I also couldn't stand him. And he knew it. And it was because i am a competetive person and he was better than me. And he knew those things too.
The second year of NOCCA didn't start out well for me, probably because i had other interests. I had been dating a girl named Melanie since midway through junior year (the previous year) and i wasn't overly concerned with much else. We were supposed to do three pieces over the summer and i seem to remember bringing mine in in varying degrees of completion. The first few weeks' assignments didn't have much heart to them either, from what i remember, and by the time our first quarter reviews came around i got called out on it. Rather than be defiant, though, i took their criticisms seriously and really started putting in a lot of effort to the pieces i turned in every monday.
These are a few of the drawings did I did during following my review. They may not look like much now, but keep in mind that I was 16 at the time.
Drawn from observation sitting at the kitchen table.
I don't remember if I drew this from a picture or if I just made it up out of my head. Regardless, everyone else seemed to really like this drawing, even as far as convincing me to enter it into the city-wide student show, to which it was accepted. I honestly always felt rather luke-warm to it.
Yeah, I thought this was such a novel use of color.
Drawn from observation. The assignment was to do something that reflected christmas, which is corny enough, but I figured there was a chance that someone else would do an ornament as well. I figured drawing my hand holding the ornament would be a more creative route. I enjoyed doing the psuedo-monochromatic self-portrait in the ornament's reflection, as well as the kinda goofy style that I did it in, in contrast to the realism of graphite drawing of my hand.
I had been working on my portraiture for a while when they gave us an assignment to "portray someone special to you," be it figuratively or literally with a portrait. I had considered drawing my grandma, which I regret not doing, but chose to draw kim, most likely because I had a picture of her handy when it came time to start drawing, and she fit the "special to you" requirement. I thought that it was be taken a bit more seriously because of the fact that she was not my girlfriend, lending it a bit of legitimacy, but it seemed to me that they judged it assuming that she was my girlfriend making it just a cheesy teenage thing to do. (specifically why I didn't draw a picture of my girlfriend.)
It's not the greatest portrait, though it was actually pretty true to the original picture. I was slightly handicapped by the fact that it was wallet-sized. At this point kim had been gone for a year and we had started a mail correspondence that lasted 4 1/2 years. I chose to use letters that she had written for the background to me to illustrate the closeness of our relationship and make it clear that she wasn't my girlfriend, since she obviously lived in Wisconsin. My point obviously wasn't made. The piece was never judged on the merit of the drawing or the use of letters. It was judged harshly on one thing: one of the letters was jokingly signed "Your Bitch, Kimberly." I was told that I needed to take into account that we were teenagers in a high school art class and that, though censorship in a general sense might seem wrong, especially in art, I was going to have to take the piece home and "adjust" it somehow to remove the offending word.
I had considered whether or not to use that letter and chose to use it assuming that, if there was one thing that we could be given credit for, being teenagers in a school dedicated to art, it was that we were slightly more mature than most and could handle the innocuous use of a swear word. It's not only that, though, I suppose.
I had this tendency to use my pieces to challenge the teachers, often in very slight ways, usually by turning in work that barely met the requirements of the assignment, but enough to qualify as having fulfilled the specs. I knew that when I included that letter in the background it was potentially going to become something that required a reaction. The reaction I got wasn't quite what I expected.
I've always thought that part of the essence of art, perhaps the purpose of art, is to challenge convention. It's not like being an artist is an instant ticket to "non-conformity", (I've often thought the idea of being a "non-conformist" in itself was rather inane) but creativity is a vehicle with which we can introduce new ideas even if they are at odds with older, accepted ones. This reminds me of a conversation I had with my friend Mr. Chet this weekend about modern art. He was talking about judging works of art based solely on aesthetics while I tried to explain to him that the worth in some pieces isn't in what they look like, but the idea that is being expressed and the context in which is was created. The thesis of many artists' work is to defy certain notions about the world or often art itself. I would have liked to see the instructors at NOCCA embracing challenges and encouraging independence. Instead they asked me to leave.
I believe it was the same week that I turned in the Kim portrait, the last week of the first semester, that they held the end-of-semester reviews. I guess in hindsight it would make sense that they kicked me out the week of the Kim portrait. When reviews were going on they would give us projects to work on in our groups, this time it was to draw still lifes of paper bags. I remember being intent on making my drawing good, and thought that it was coming along quite well, when they called me in for my review. I recall that they got to the point fairly quickly, informing me that I was not invited back for the second semester. It's not my nature to be confrontational but I protested strongly, explaining to them that I had stepped up my effort and thought that was quite evident in the pieces I had been bringing in. Ms. Mouton, the print teacher, seemed to be in agreement with me and Mrs. Gross made a hollow show of acquiescing, but Mr. Gross was pretty adamant about his intentions for me to leave, and Mrs. Gross quickly became her lapdog self in seconding anything Mr. Gross said. After agreeing that my artwork and effort had improved in previous months, the reason that they gave for persisting in my dismissal was that my home school grades had dropped in the second semester the previous year and, although they were up again this year, they thought that they might drop off again.
When they first told me I wasn't all that bothered by it, I was somewhat pleased to be rid of them, as I'm sure they were pleased to be rid of me. When I think back to it, though, it has always bothered me that they turned out to be such bastards. I was never a bad kid and I was anything but dumb. If anything I embraced the idea of art and believed in my own artistic identity more than I believed in their authority to guide us effectively. By kicking me out for the last semester before graduation that denied me the ability to graduate with special honor and recognition for the talents that they were supposed to help nuture and grow. They dismissed me over a personality conflict, a conflict that they were never adult enough to confront for what it was.
I'll follow this up soon with some thoughts on what I got out of the experience, and perhaps to tell you about the letter that I left one day on the windshield of Christian's car.
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