Becoming The Student, #18: The PhD (Dr. Aja Holmes at Wakonse)

Posted on September 3, 2014 by matt ballou under Art, Life, Teaching, Writing

I was blessed to be able to attend the Wakonse Conference on College Teaching earlier this year (thanks, Deborah!) and while there I got to meet so many amazing people. One of them was Aja Holmes. As part of the cohort I was in, she set a tone of inclusion, concern, and thoughtfulness. She was welcoming, passionate, always engaging, and always ready with an encouraging word. It makes perfect sense that she’s found her niche as a Residence Life director working with Undergraduates. While at Wakonse, we got to share in the joy of her being appointed to a position at California State University-Sacramento. I’ve held onto this portrait of her since May, but since today is her birthday, it’s time to post it! Read below to find out more about this awesome individual!

The PhD (Aja Holmes at Wakonse), gouache on paper, 10 by 16 inches. 2014.

You just earned your PhD. What drew you do your field and what was your educational trajectory?

“As a kid I always loved school. I would play school with my little brother – my first student. He would complain and ask our mom, ‘Why does Aja always want to play school? Didn’t she just come home from school?’ But he would go along with it if I promised to let him try wrestling moves on me (learning to compromise – HAHA!).

I also knew that I wanted to be a doctor, but when I saw blood for the first time it did not agree with me. I knew that I would have to take another route to becoming a doctor. While being involved as an undergraduate student leader someone told me about the work of Student Affairs and that I could live out the rest of my life on a college campus; I said SIGN ME UP! I loved everything about being on a college campus. So after undergrad I stayed on at Illinois State University for my Master’s Degree in College Student Personnel.

Back then I did not know for sure if I was going to get my PhD, but I knew that after my Master’s Degree I should get some significant work experience before going back for a doctorate. I did just that: worked at two universities in the area of ResLife. In 2009, I applied to doctoral programs in Higher Education Leadership and was accepted into Iowa State University. I had heard of Iowa State and I knew that if I wanted to finish I needed to be close to my family. Luckily Dad was a six-hour drive to Chicago and Mom was a three-hour drive to St. Paul, Minnesota. To be in the middle of my family really strengthened my support system.

People often ask ‘what is your ultimate goal in life?’ They ask even more since I earned my PhD. Ultimately, I would like to become a university president. I also want to teach in a higher education program that prepares student affairs professionals.”

You have such a warm and engaging personality. How you do maintain your passionate, hopeful, and excited outlook?

“I am often asked why am I so happy all the time. I have had to really think about it and truly understand what makes me happy. I decided a while back to take control of my happiness. To rely on others to make you happy relinquishes control on your outlook in life. So I make sure that I have a say in what makes me happy, and things that do not – I rid my life of them. My passion stems from experiences that have occurred in my life that had some effect on my life. Being a multiracial woman oftentimes lends me to have different experiences than most. Whether it’s issues such as the Voting Rights Act being challenged, unarmed African Americans being killed by the police, the DREAM Act, or other situations that involve people of underrepresented groups, I have a passion to act. I take to heart quotes and sayings such as, ‘to whom much is given, much is required’ and, ‘service is what we pay for living’.”

When we spoke at Wakonse, you told me about the important impact your Dad made on your life. Can you name a couple key lessons he provided?

“I was raised in a single parent household. Unlike the norm, it was my father who raised me. He has been one of my biggest supporters and cheerleaders. Since I was in the 3rd grade, my father cared for for my brother and I. He has taught me so much in life, from how to mingle and get to know people you just met, to how to be a woman of Color in a white-male-dominated society, to how to use humor to break the ice. He told me to keep pushing and don’t let what other people think get in the way of my hopes and dreams. I saw his struggles of being a parent while trying to own a business, and of being a parent to a teenage daughter coming of age. He sought out advice from his sisters and other lady friends in his life. But my father had to step up when needed. I will forever be in awe of what he did.”

10287004_10152438914589534_3993202260772184824_o Me working on Aja’s portrait while we chatted together.

You’re now at California State University-Sacramento working as the Senior Director for Housing and Residential Life. What inspired you to focus your career toward working with students in ResLife situations?

“I love everything about living in the residence halls! I lived in the halls all four of my undergraduate years. Working in ResLife has allowed me to get to know that part of the university from the inside and out. I get to interact with the students in a way that no other Student Affairs person does: while they are in their PJs at home. I get to see them grow into young citizens. Since my research is on supervision, and a large part of Residence Life is supervision, I am able to see how my research can evolve and help prepare student affairs professionals to be the best they can be in this area.”

What do you think is one of the most important issues university students are tackling in 2014?

“One of the most important issues facing students today is the appreciation of differences. I use the word difference in the total meaning of the word: everything that is different. Students are too desensitized to even recognize when something is racist, homophobic, or sexist, etc. Students on our campuses have a unique makeup. They have been using computers their whole life and technology is their way of life; that is all that they know. Interacting with people who are different from them is hindered because of the technology. Technology made the world smaller but actually talking to another human being is a hurdle for them… hence their lack of the appreciation of differences.”

I think you’re into tabletop gaming – at least you were running the show at Wakonse! What’s your favorite board game?

“My favorite board game is really any one that my nieces and nephew are playing. Every holiday season we play board games and I am able to see them learn the process of waiting their turn, reading directions, compromising among each other, and displaying good sportpersonship. It is much more interactive than video games. They are such a joy to be around and I love everything there is to being an Aunt. I will play board games with them for hours and hours!”

Thanks for sitting for me, Aja! Your portrait will be on the way soon!

The Chrysanthemum Powder (A Portrait of CaiQun)

Posted on July 31, 2014 by matt ballou under Art, Life, Teaching

I’ve been working on a portrait of CaiQun for over 6 months now. The resulting image is, perhaps, actually more of a self-portrait-via-still-life. The significance of the chrysanthemum powder is huge: it was CaiQun’s last daily material connection to China for many months after she came home with us. The first two years of her life she drank the warm beverage before mid-morning naps. We quickly learned her routine and, informed by the orphanage, purchased many bags of the powder to bring back to the US with us. I saved the last bag we used. It has, like so many other seemingly inconsequential objects, become a part of my studio environment. As I observed it over the weeks and months after China, it transformed into a kind of icon.

Since I tend to be an observational, perceptual painter, I like to keep items I might paint near me as stimulation and inspiration. I placed the bag into one of my paint boxes. There it sat, situated among paint and brushes and sketches for quite a long time, until one day it grabbed my attention with force. The addition of a few other elements – bottles, a sketchbook I’d used in China, a sketch of festival lanterns – and the stage was set.

The Chrysanthemum Powder (A Portrait of CaiQun), Oil on panel, 16 by 16 inches. 2014. Click to super-enlarge it.

Anyway, I really love this painting.

It goes up in an exhibition next week. If you’re in the mid Missouri area I hope you’ll stop by to see it, another piece I made, and the work of a number of other artists from Mizzou and China. Here’s some info about the show:

East-West Dialogues: Paintings by Chinese Visiting Scholars & Their Hosting Art Professors

Participating Artists:

Zhonghua Gao, Min Li, Rujing Sun*, Ruiqin Wang, Matt Ballou, William Hawk, Mark Langeneckert, Lampo Leong

Show: August 4-15, 2014
Reception: Tuesday, August 5, 2014, 4-6pm

Craft Studio Gallery, University of Missouri-Columbia
518 Hitt Street, N12 Memorial Union, Columbia, MO 65211, USA
http://craftstudio.missouri.edu/gallery/
573-882-2889
Gallery Hours: Mon-Thurs 9am-6pm, Fri 9am-4pm, Sat 12-5pm

Exhibition organized by the Office of the Vice Provost for International Programs, The MU Confucius Institute, and the MU Department of Art.

*Rujing spent a great deal of time with me in my Color Drawing classes during the Spring of 2014. She’s a wonderful artist and was a pleasure to have in my classrooms.

Atticus Garrett Ballou

Posted on July 21, 2014 by matt ballou under Life

The boy cometh.

I have to admit that I have fears about raising a boy. Sure, I have worries about my girls, too… but I am a male. I know something about being a boy. Perhaps in some sense the otherness of girls is a comfort, or a kind of blessed distance. And I just don’t think of females as the ones creating epic problems – starting wars, hurting others, crafting systems of denial, demagoguing themselves into power… that is all stuff that men do naturally and perennially.

And so that scares me. Am I up to instilling something true and real and deep in this little guy? Can I give him the transcendent perspective that helped me? Can I encourage him to learn the lessons only his mom and big sisters can teach? God knows I needed the presence of my mom and sisters and wife and mother-in-law and daughters to temper me, transform me, change me from a yell-happy dolt to someone with a bit more self control and thoughtfulness. The process is forever ongoing, and it’s all a matter of grace that it has worked at all. It’s taken me 37 years to be halfway acceptable as a human and it terrifies me to think I’ll be responsible to make a man of someone else. If I can’t force it to happen in myself, I certainly can’t manufacture it in anyone else.

Of course, it won’t be all my job, thank Jesus. But I’m wary of the process.

And so it’s important to name well. To cast a vision with that name. To use that name as a witness and a source of power. I’ll think about our son’s namesake right now to quell some of these fears. I’ll speak his name as a prayer of hope and a charge of confidence. Atticus:

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

“The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

“Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It’s knowing you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”

“There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep ’em all away from you. That’s never possible.”

The quotes above were spoken by Atticus Finch. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

To close, here are a couple momentous posts from when #1 and #2 were named: MGB and MCQB.

Becoming The Student, #16: Gina TECHNICOLOR Ceylan

Posted on July 7, 2014 by matt ballou under Life

Gina Ceylan is an incredible person. Every time I’m with her, I’m amazed at her intelligence, engagement, and desire for true connection and meaning. I knew I had to include her in my Becoming The Student project.

Gina TECHNICOLOR Ceylan, Gouache and Colored Pencil on Paper mounted on Panel. 20 inches in diameter. 2014.

Click the image to see this piece larger.

Gina has a genetic condition which has caused her eyesight to degrade over time, and she is – essentially – blind. In spite of this she has developed an extremely acute vision of where education, science, and societal conditions are and where they could be. She’s a passionate student and teacher (she holds a PhD in Science Education). She’s a lover of music and public conversation. She loves to foment deep thought in herself and others.

Part of her experience of losing her sight has meant that her brain is rewiring, taking into account the lack of external visual stimulus and creating manifestations of color and form in Gina’s mind’s eye. Because of these inner experiences, she has taken to talking about her Technicolor experience in grand terms. In some of our past discussions, the story of the blind men and the elephant has taken center stage in the Technicolor arena. I even created a psychedelic elephant for her Facebook page, as seen below:

There is so much I could write about Gina, but I’ll let a few of her own thoughts speak for themselves (with a few key parts emphasized by me).

“I don’t like this phrase “time management” though; it doesn’t sit well. We don’t manage time; we strive for dynamic thought-task coherence through time. Let’s go with thought-task conduction. That’s better, closer to what’s really happening when we work towards our little purposes. Got to love it when the little Technicolor light bulb goes off. Understanding AND potential improved use of the scatter-mind. Score.”

“Some of us dance a little closer to chaos.”

-from Thought Patterns & Thought-task Conduction – December 17, 2013

“Ignorance isn’t something so much as it is really the lack of something [relative awareness maybe], the way darkness is the absence of light. But it behaves like a something, a disgusting kind of living evil something, because we bring it to life. Here’s the worst part: it’s not intentional. Ignorance doesn’t mean to destroy anything anymore than a wisteria vine or kudzu intends to cover the landscape and choke out all other life. The vines are often planted with good intention, and with no knowledge of how they will take root and thrive at the expense of everything.

Life is a collection of countless choices. Our reality emerges through these choices, but there’s too many of them, so our relative subconscious takes care of most of it, and we let society decide so many others. And ignorance emerges, without intention, and without anyone noticing, spreading over everything, choking the life out. Hell is real, you know; it’s a place in our minds and we bring it to life and make it real in our world. The road to hell is paved with ignorance. I think we’re getting there.

I know only myself [pretty big accomplishment]; I’m a fool’s fool. I know nothing else. Which is to say I have a great many well-founded, poorly articulated suspicions that shed just enough light for me to see my ignorance. At least I’m a happy fool, and not in the false bliss of ignorance but in my knowledge of it, and in my pleasure in tearing it up by its roots, possibly burning it just for good measure. It’s a ridiculous effort, the task is too big, but it’s fun.”

-from Ignorance, Intentionality & The Road to Hell – December 8, 2013

Girl at gym: “I want to go to med school and be a pediatrician, but…”
Me: “Well, why not go for it?”
Girl: “I’m scared… scared I’m not smart enough”
Me: “That’s crap! Someone lied to you about the nature of intelligence!”

“What kind of education system teaches people to be afraid of learning to be what they want!? [To hell with] a system that instills this kind of fear in people! We ought to be smarter than that.”

-from a Facebook Rant, April 15, 2014

“Think of The Future possible pathways, sprawled out in front of us in all their dendritic splendor… Yes, for all the same reasons. One choice at a time, travelers.”

-a Facebook Status, December 31, 2013

Keep dancing close to that chaos, Gina. Thank you for grabbing some of us off the sidelines and getting us to dance, too.

To learn more about her, read this article about her life and work. It’s a fantastic read.

Becoming The Student, #15: Mar Cus

Posted on June 28, 2014 by matt ballou under Art, Life, Teaching

One of the most significant relationships of my adult life has been with a former student and current colleague, Marcus Miers. Right now he’s finishing up his MFA at The University of Wisconsin at Madison, but he undertook his BFA at The University of Missouri. Marcus was among the most interesting, confusing, and outstanding students I’ve had at Mizzou. He is, so far, the only student I’ve had as an undergraduate who came back to work in the classroom with me as an assistant in the very classes in which he distinguished himself.

The semester where he worked with me as an assistant to my Color Drawing courses remains a highlight of my teaching experience. As fun as that was, however, his participation in Color Drawing as a student was more transformative to me. He consistently challenged the premise of each project. He pushed me to go beyond my standard explanations. He devoted significant time and intellectual effort to grasp as much as possible in the classroom.

At one point during his second tour of duty in Color Drawing (this time in Intermediate Color Drawing), Marcus turned away from the assignment I gave. We had been working from the model for weeks, and his work was large, energetic, and chromatically intense. Yet one day, out of the blue, he simply set up his easel outside the parachute I’d hung as a barrier to block general views of the model. I had learned to trust him, though I found it somewhat cheeky of him to ignore just about every aspect of the project I’d just assigned. I sat back and watched as the beginnings of what would – eventually – become the foundation of his MFA work began to gestate right before me.

Forgoing the figure, Marcus turned instead to direct perceptual effects. He would not turn back. Light and color, intensely dense and saturated, were the basis of his rigorous investigations. The work (here’s an example) became smaller and, oddly, more spectral. It hovered over the counter-intuitive field of non-focus that forms the basis of all representation. He was seeing through depiction toward an intensity of hue and luminosity that is basically felt rather than taught. It makes perfect sense that he would soon become passionate about Josef Albers (and in particular Albers’ notion of halation). I learned more through witnessing that single aesthetic and educational maneuver than I had in my previous years of teaching combined.

Mar Cus (High Waters and Duct Tape)

Charcoal and Pastel on Paper, 30 by 20 inches. 2014.

Below I’m posting three contemplations on Marcus that I made prior to the portrait above. They were created after a photo I took of Marcus at the Milwaukee Art Museum last year.

2014-04-04 19.30.15

The Sublimity of the Duct Tape Painter (Portrait of Marcus Miers with Tears)

Dimensions variable, 2014. Created in Sketchbook Pro and Artrage with alterations in Afterlight. April, 2014.

2014-04-04 22.22.42 The Apotheosis of Mar Cus (Portrait of Marcus Miers with a Rocket)

Dimensions variable, 2014. Created in Sketchbook Pro and Artrage with alterations in Afterlight. April, 2014.

1977309_10104000276785119_1550973951_n The Artist is Absent (Marcus Missing From the Milwaukee Art Museum)

Digital painting, Dimensions variable. Created in Sketchbook Pro and Artrage with alterations in Afterlight. April, 2014.

I am so thankful that Marcus has participated in my life over the years. We have shown work together (more than once). We have traveled together. Next year I will curate an exhibition of his work at Imago Gallery and Cultural Center in Columbia, MO. Knowing Marcus (and his brother Sam) has been so rewarding, so educational, so important. I’m just grateful to get to celebrate him and share the images above with everyone.

On top of it all, it’s his birthday today. So happy birthday, sir. Thank you for your friendship and encouragement.

To close, here’s a little throwback:

Marcus working on one of the last figure drawings he made in Color Drawing. October, 2010.

June 28, 1914 – Sarajevo

Posted on June 27, 2014 by matt ballou under Life

Above: My modification of the historic newspaper illustration depicting the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the event which precipitated World War One. iPhone image, Afterlight, Glitché, and Instagram modifications, variable dimensions. June 27, 2014.

Here’s the original:

History is a strange and chaotic dancer. It chooses odd dance partners. Each pas de deux influences, inflects, and infects us all. How weird it is to think that from such a small flash on one street corner were launched the boots and bombs of a thousand beachheads. How horrific to consider the vast interconnections of sociology, politics, aristocracy, nationalistic fervor, punditry, demagoguery, and despair that weave the blood of the Archduke with the blood of Sgt. Thomas Z Spitzer (the most recent American killed in Afghanistan, June 25, 2014). How frustrating to consider the wasted lives and resources of one hundred thousand hills and fields. How high the cost. How distracting the efforts. How pathetic the justifications.

World War One formalized the concept of – and effects of – total war.

We will never live it down.

PS: If you’re interested in more background on World War One I suggest this course from The Great Courses. I took this class in 2007 to supplement my knowledge of the subject and found it highly illuminating and a springboard for further reading and study.

Halo Nostalgia

Posted on June 25, 2014 by matt ballou under Life

It’s been well over a year since I fired up the old XBOX360 to play Halo. I had played pretty consistently for a few years after my good friend Pete bought me the system back in 2009. We had some fun nights on Multiplayer in Halo 3 and Reach (as well as in ODST, Halo 4, and various campaigns). I have to admit that some of those maps became special to me. They ended up becoming iconic spaces where Pete and I could chat and laugh while playing the game. They were as memorable as many of the real world places in which we shared life.

Above: Several versions of my Halo Avatars, Halo 3, ODST, and Halo 4.

Unfortunately for me (and my main teammate), my performances were often less than stellar. Don’t get me wrong, I sometimes put it all together and did well (I achieved Legend status in Reach [I know, I know – not super impressive, but at least competitive] and I completed the Halo 4 campaign on Legendary difficulty), but things often went like this:

Above: Me killing myself with a grenade fail about 2 seconds into the start of a game.

Below: Again, taking myself out with an ill-timed grenade.

Above: But sometimes I redeemed myself.

Many thanks to Pete for documenting these highlights of my gaming career.

Anyway.

As I said above, many of the arenas in which Mutliplayer games took place became evocative spaces that have stuck with me. Periodically I’ll find myself dreaming about running through or flying above one of them. Every gamer knows the feeling of nostalgia that can take over when they venture back into Hyrule or dust off the old NES for a run through of a classic game. So in the spirit of this strange kind of experience that’s unique to the last 30 years or so, I’m posting screenshots of some of my favorite Halo maps. Who knows if I’ll ever get time to load these maps back up, but I enjoyed them while it lasted.

Above: From Halo:Reach, The Cage. One of my top three maps to play.

Above: Pinnacle, from Reach.

Above: Halo 3’s Narrows. Launching across that gap was always fun.

Above: Reflection, a map for Halo:Reach, always reminded me of a creepy, abandoned mall. Check out a fly-though of the level here.

Above: The legendary Guardian arena from Halo 3.

Above: The multilevel Boardwalk map from Reach. Watch a fly-through here. Pete hated this one (he detested having to run after opponents)

Above: Sword Base, with its room of carnage, was always a good map… unless the servers selected it too many times in a row.

Above: Forge World/Asylum, from Halo:Reach, was a remake of Halo 2’s Sanctuary.

There were many other great maps (Valhalla, The Pit, Epitaph, Complex, Construct, Haven), but the ones above really were quintessential Halo fun for me. Many thanks to Peter for all those hours…

My long-dormant XBOX account says that I played Halo Multiplayer for 30 days, 10 hours, and 20 minutes over the course of about 1,200 days. Now those hours generally go to my girls at home, but I still have that old muscle memory for the hand/eye coordination of Halo… maybe one of these days I’ll break it out again. Or maybe I’ll get out the SNES instead…

“SSSSLAYER!”

Becoming The Student, #14: JJ

Posted on June 16, 2014 by matt ballou under Art, Life, Teaching

I’ve been teaching at The University of Missouri for seven years. In that time I’ve served on many graduate thesis committees and developed a number of great, long-lasting relationships with grads. But it wasn’t until Jane Jun arrived three years ago that I was a “Main Advisor” or “Head of Committee”. The opportunity to work closely with Jane for those years was a huge benefit to me. As Jane progressed through the program she made huge changes in her work and found ways to grow that were both necessary and surprising. She rose to meet difficult challenges when she really needed to. Her thesis work – which dealt with female Asian identity, diaspora/immigration, stereotypes, societal (and personal) expectations, as well as the ways portraiture and self-portraiture have been transformed in recent years – was illuminating and meaningful. Her thesis writing was excellent and was important for me, as the father of an adopted daughter from China, to spend time thinking and dialoguing about on so many levels. It was a privilege to be up close and see all of her work come together.

JJ and me at Shakespeare’s way back in her first year of grad school.

Now JJ is heading back to South Korea to begin her post-grad school life. I have to admit that the annual exodus of grads is hard for me. So much mental and emotional energy goes into working with my students, so much hope and desire for them to do well. Add to that my sentimental nature and you can probably imagine my mindset each May.

JJ and me at our last Shakespeare’s hangout last month. We point off into the heights of a glorious future.

In creating my Becoming the Student portrait of JJ, I wanted to maintain my method – a short session from observation, with only minor changes after the fact – while at the same time celebrating her achievement. I’m glad she agreed to pose in her cap and was willing to maintain a calm – if a tad pensive and sad – expression. If you know anything about her work (click here if not), you know that the seriousness of her pose and quietude of her face here are nothing like what you’d normally see in an image of her.

JJ, MFA. Oil on panel, 8 inches in diameter, 2014.

I’ll sure miss her shouting “SIRRRRRR!” when she sees me.

I already do.

Inspiration: Students

Posted on June 10, 2014 by matt ballou under Art, Life, Teaching

I started this blog five years and two days ago, and one of the things I’ve enjoyed most about it is sharing the work of my students. I never try to over-sell it. Most of my students are not Art majors. Many of them have had very little art-making experience before they take my classes. Yet they always make transformational movements, always end up showing themselves things they never imagined doing. I want to share a few of my Spring 2014 students’ works and words below. They were inspirational to me this semester. All images and words shared with permission.

Tayler Newcomer, Undeclared Major. Self Portrait Study, 14 by 11 inches, Graphite.

“Everything changed when I walked in this classroom at the beginning of this semester. This class has changed the way I thought of drawing, and even my perspective on life. I found myself more focused and calm when I drew instead of anxious and judged. It helped to bring back this hope and urge to draw that I used to have when I was a little kid and I’m not sure if I can even fully explain what that means to me. What I’ve taken from this class is honestly a little more uncertainty, but I know that’s not a bad thing… I just had thought to myself that I could never be an artist or a musician or a writer. Yet I still draw, still play music, and I still write on that novel I’m almost sure I’ll never finish. I want to go out and appreciate this wonderful gift of life that has been bestowed upon us.” – Tayler Newcomer.

Tayler Newcomer, Undeclared Major. Self Portrait Study, 18 by 24 inches, Graphite.

Emily Crane, Graphic Design Major, Softball. Master Copy after LeRoy Neiman, 24 by 18 inches, Pastel.

“I want to see things through others’ eyes and be open to change! In the rest of my life I want to keep trying to be slow to anger and quick to love, and care as Jesus would. I pray my life will be a light for people in one way or another!” – Emily Crane.

Emily Crane, Graphic Design Major, Softball. Self Portrait Off Third Base, from a M, 24 by 18 inches, Pastel.

Blessing Ikoro, Psychology Major. Self Portrait Study, 14 by 11 inches, Colored Pencil.

“If it were not for a sense of the whole I would not be me when I draw my self portraits. I would not be such a pronounced image within the scene that I draw; it is the universe itself that helps pronounce my image. The drawing then has a sense of the whole as well.” – Blessing Ikoro.

Blessing Ikoro, Psychology Major. Study of Busts of Caesar and Apollo, 24 by 18 inches, Charcoal.

Amanda Bradley, Art Major. Master Copy after Dutch Master, 24 by 18 inches, Colored Pencil.

Shayna Painter, Business Administration Major. Master Copy after Kupka, 18 by 18 inches, Colored Pencil.

“The way you see something and the way you experience it are so different. The visual aspect of anything isn’t more important than what you learned from it or now it made you feel.” – Hunter Whitt, Elementary Education Major.

These young women were just a few of the outstanding students I had this semester. Here’s hoping they continue on with the art impulse.

Banality

Posted on June 2, 2014 by matt ballou under Art, Life, Teaching

I’ve had a number of what could be termed crises of faith over the last few years. Given that my life isn’t particularly compartmentalized, arenas slide over and influence one another. This can be for good or ill: A car needing to get fixed shows up on my choice of palette. The sickly child informs my lesson plans. A poorly executed drawing demonstration syncs up with indigestion.

One of the difficulties I have found in teaching the fundamentals of drawing and painting (something I’ve been doing for nearly a decade) is that I have become more and more detached from the epic expansiveness of potential meaning I once saw so easily in everything.

If that seems counter-intuitive, you’re right. On the one hand, I’m opening up this huge world for students and advocating for its meaning-making properties. Sometimes I do a good job at this; sometimes it clicks. On the other hand, however, often I have to break things down so far that they become divested of their mystery. This is probably because I’m not the best teacher – nor the best student – I could be.

But it is also that, amidst the urgency of schedules and diapers and curricula and learning goals and policy committees and trying to eat right and falling off ladders and mowing the lawn and hoping I’m a good dad, the horizon of my universe has shrunk. I can no longer connect to the mysteries. When I look in their direction they seem blank – I seem blank. I look at pictures that used to inspire me and fire me up… I can feel the echoes of what I felt 10 or 20 years ago, yet they seem vague, hollow, incomplete, impotent, and affected attempts. I painfully sense the depths to which I once could swim, but realize I no longer try those fathoms. The shallows, it seems, are the extent of my aesthetic, spiritual, and intellectual submersion these days.

All of the hard-fought attempts I’ve made as an artist and writer seem to, generally, make little or no connection to others. This is not a statement meant to engender pity toward me. I’m not begging for praise. I simply recognize that the average viewer/reader receives perhaps 10% of the passion, reflection, or depth I intended. I am thankful for that 10% of understanding. I’m thankful for every picture I’ve had the honor to show or sell and grateful for every piece of writing I’ve had the privilege to publish into the world. Yet I feel that I can no longer put so much time or energy into these things. It’s not that I don’t want to do it, it’s that I don’t have the depth anymore. Those corridors are closed off. I have shrunk. The extent of my vision has stalled. The infinite chiaroscuro of the universe has fled from me.

I’m not writing this to garner sympathy. I’m just trying to be honest. I think this is part of the life of an artist. Perhaps this too shall pass. I only know that my ability to believe in the value of plumbing the depths is all but gone, and I’m almost not even sad about it. What happens when you no longer feel tethered to what used to be your deepest motivation?

So much of what happened in the best work I’ve made over the last 20 years can be chalked up to faith. I can see passages of paintings and drawings where I had faith, where I had belief in the work. What happened in them was beyond technique and ability, beyond solid ideas or philosophical underpinning. The best ones went far beyond my knowing how to make them. When you lose that faith, how can you ever see or do those things again?

I know I am lucky. I get to teach, get to make paintings and drawings and prints. I get to show my work. But in doing all of that I can see how things atrophy and become stilted. The raging river stagnates. Will I be making tame pictures of flowers in 20 years? I hope not. Yet I feel a domestication growing. When one has a creative itch to scratch but no longer has emotional, spiritual, or intellectual access to the deep things of life the result is often the height of banality.

So artists, pundits, and mass-shooters proliferate. Another day, another war, another hundred thousand more orphans. Google knows what Star Trek-themed trinket I’m most likely to buy (and I actually consider buying it). I remember less and less of the awkward dreams of the 20-year-old me while the 40-year-old me who can no longer run with his kids comes more and more into focus. Perhaps it’s all an episode that would pass with a couple more hours of sleep each night, or with actually cutting red meat out of my diet. Or perhaps it’s just how things are, and I’ll have to figure out how to reach those old depths again after another decade and a second wind.

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Category Archives: Life