Open on crowded classroom
students fidgeting with their stuff - some new,some continuing students


G \\\\,\stands before her class, looks around the second floor room in Kinsel Art Center used for drawing classes, back down at her all-university enrollment sheets, counts the number of art students listed, then looks back up and around at the shining faces aimed in her direction or near to it. Stabbing at the air she points toward students whose names she already knows then places check marks next to their names.

G :
“This being the first class session of the fall semester I don’t expect you to stay for the full four hours….”

Several hushed voices expressed the gamut of sounds, disappointment to relief, from various points in the room.

among them:
Elyria:
A tall girl whose back goes rigid in indignation, simultaneously looking from her easel adjustments to the art instructor as she fiddles with the mechanism, tossing her mop back as she bends to the task.
Her hair is clasped into a sort of unanchored bun having the effect of wearing a hairy blonde beret. As she moves it flops over one ear, or onto her forehead or over the other ear or toward the back of her neck, depending entirely on the angle at which she stands or bends, her appearance totally outside of her realm of concentration.

Seated next to her on a drawing stool is her close friend,
Amanda Blake:
Minoring in theater, now, out of frustration with the art department in general and her experiences with Gloria 0Brampton in particular Amanda seems jittery. In her immediate plans, her next step is to just drop out of the program entirely, making it impossible to get any more art courses at all, but to mercifully end the ongoing battle entirely.
Amanda’s unruly dark curls seems so flyaway as to be just another albeit more manageable bother to her.
She bunches it with her hands as if into a pony tail, flicks it over her left shoulder, leans off from the drawing stool on which she is sitting so she can talk to the blonde girl above who was standing at an easel to her right behind her large drawing board so as not to be seen by Gloria. (they are in the left most corner of the classroom, to Gloria's view)

Amanda
(Cupping her left hand in front of her mouth):
“See? What‘d I tell you, Elyria?”


Both girls have large hardcover bound sketchbooks at the ready; each is armed with copious materials with which to work (portfolios of work in progress, a few large sketchbooks partially completed, varying sizes of stretched canvas, all leaning against the two walls that make up their corner , both look at Glory in dismay.

Elyria:
“I know, Blake, I KNOW!” Elyria says most of this nearly inaudibly, until, as she bends to hook her linked art boxes over the tall end of the drawing stool, it falls to the floor with a clatter. As she takes the handles in hand noisily and hooks them over the stool for ready access to their contents she expells more air than would allow for a whisper amid such exertion, as a result,

“ She ALways DOES this!” The blonde says loudly, her voice rises cuttingly above the low-level generally companionable room chatter.

G registers the cutting remark with a quick glance and goes back to her paperwork and overall assessment of the students in the room.

Elyria opens her sketchbook, rubber-bands it to a smaller easel so she can keep the pages open. She reaches into what looks like a series of mock fishing tackle boxes made out of recycled aluminum cans connected to one another in a more or less unified whole, as if they are stitched together with wire. It has made rather a musical sound when she set it on the drawing stool just behind where she stands at the larger easel, so she can sit next to it when she is not drawing or leaning against the wall to think; she can contemplate works open and in place. Taking out some charcoal and an aerosol can of fixitive from a muslin side-pocket of her art materials contraption she plunks the can on the stool with a hiss and a bang in frustration.

Glory glances toward her again.

The dark haired Amanda risks another whisper while hiding her face behind her sketchbook.

Amanda: “Don’t get her mad, Leerie; she’ll just leave earlier!”

Blake places the thick drawing book against a vertical board at one end of the drawing bench, setting it securely at an angle determined by grooves near the end of the seat for the best angle at which to work on it. She takes clips from her jeans to keep the facing pages open so she can make some decisions on a structural design that looks like a theater stage set. She bends over to select a group of pens and a jar of India ink out of one of the pockets on a large canvas bag that doubles as a back-pack. Said back-pack very much resembles a lumpy clown suit that had been transformed into a thing to carry art supplies.

The hand-made bag is massive, covered with snaps enclosing different-sized divisions of space within. Each pocket holds a range of implements that make marks in color or blacks and greys. Pencils, pens with a variety of points for ink drawing etc. Amanda inventories her every bag pocket before going to work as is her custom, her compulsion, her routine attempt to release excess anxiety.

She begins to ink in one of the smaller drawings in order to elaborate on the dramatic lighting possibilities in the stage set developing before her.

Elyria:
“Oh forget it, Blake, she’ll leave early no matter what any of us say.” Elyria says this as loudly as her first outburst, punctuating her rapidly dwindling patience with the situation in which she finds herself.

G :
“Do I detect a note of irritation, Ms McKenzie?”

Gloria simultaneously says this as she turns around to close the door to the classroom.

Elyria McKenzie doesn’t answer or venture / bestow a look at G but only takes a pencil out of the knot of thick hair perched askew but mostly at the top of her head and begins to sketch refinements on some work upon the open page before her. She reached around to the back of the easel and fiddled with the adjustment knobs again until she got the angle that was best within her reach to draw, then proceeded with concentration.

The breastplate to a suit of armor was shaping up on her sketch paper as she looked alternately from a library book on the bench back to Glory, then to the page and back again as she worked on the study. Glory it was that she kept scanning for size, estimates of whom Elyria noted carefully next to parts of the armor drawn in the sketchbook resting on the easel. The book was her reference point for construction of the armor.


*

The rest of the class was comprised of a range of young men and women several of whom also were prepared to work immediately. Studio time and space was a precious commodity to the committed art student, individual attention was, particularly in Professor Brampton’s classes, even harder to get.

Newer students were easily identified by the older heads not just by memory dimmed over the summer, obfuscated by hair color and length adjustments. Some of the paler skins were now tanned to more or less richer browns, some were leaner or thinned to the bone after months of activity in the sun. The new students generally seemed to have uniformly blank looks alternating with confused, confounded expressions. Many of them feigned boredom but behind the masks any astute observer could see puzzlement, they had yet to have the benefit of word of mouth learning regarding the ins and outs of art study at this particularly over-sized department in a mega university.

The theater arts were clustered physically nearby the visual art disciplines. Which is to say that Morgan Auditorium was next door to Kinsel Art Center. There was a gaggle of theater students that could be clearly heard down below in the sculpture park between the two buildings through the open windows, standing on one of the drawing benches here on the second floor in Kinsel could be seen one student, who was sketching the drama-engrossed figures below. Their voices carried on the balmy fall winds into the studio, singing out, emoting, dancing about trying to garner attention, each ignorant of the other as they went about their delight filled routine, setting up their happy or sadly dramatic din. The only more watchful eye than that of the student standing to sketch them was that of their instructor who was avidly in search for signs of distinction among them. Meanwhile in the room, here with us was the spatially analytical eye of one of Gloria’s students who was doing gesture drawings of them on a hand held sketchbook as they cavorted about.

“Now, class, there’s the list of supply sources for you along side a variety of suggested supplies.
Gloria pointed at the bulletin board.

“You’ll also see due dates for expected assignments throughout the semester and for the remainder of the year, as well. If I never see any of your work until the last week of these classes you can expect a possible fifty-percent reduction in grade no matter the quality of the final work given for evaluation.

“Some of you are already aware that I don’t care about the subject matter of your two dimensional explorations. I am not concerned about the ends to which you build or draw as long as I see consistent commitment to your work and a regular investment of energy toward either completion of the suggested assignments or something related to each of them, or opposing them. Again, I am not averse to accepting anything that you might work on that seems to be leading you somewhere.

“Just so your not getting yourself bogged down. Anything that liberates you to go on, to improve, to give evidence, at the very least, that you are fascinated with what you choose to explore will earn you the better grades, if that matters to you above all else in this world, well, then we will not have all that much to talk about together, will we? But, such proof will satisfy the requirements for these courses. I know how vague that sounds, but in the end, I think you will agree that open endedness helps you more than exacting detailed requirements that will stifle rather than lead to the kind of expansiveness in your work that you will find carrying you forward in this field when you leave this place. That is, if you EVER leave this place…


“...and how are YOU today, Mr. Wintergreen?” Glory looked around the room for the oldest art student on record at Woods, not seeing him in evidence she continued looking at her list. Meanwhile a new enrollee, a pleasant enough looking gent, looked up at the sound of the Wintergreen name and nodded as if to say that he was well enough and thanks for asking, but his expression showed anyone looking that he may have found it odd that she seemed to know him whereas they had yet to meet or be introduced.

“I’ll leave detailed assignments posted on the board there.” Glory walked over to the board affixed to the wall near the western-most entrance to the classroom and tapped on the spot just below Gothic letters which read “ASSIGNMENTS.” Under that was a torn page of newsprint, which, if you do not know, has a tendency to yellow very soon in harsh light and in exposure to damp air. The only readable part hanging there was a remnant of an old copy of one of the first assignments on it, left hanging from the previous year. It very loosely described the required task of fabricating something to accommodate your own materials, a portable artist’s supply source that would allow transit from personal storage facilities to studios and/or classrooms and home.

As she walked in front of the class towards the opposing wall, she looked back at her class list, glancing around the room.

“Is there a David Honkey in here?”

There was a rustling and a few muffled laughs from the group, as one boy’s face lit up with a pink that seemed to seep down his neck, where it pooled into a deep crimson blotch or two. The boy was decidedly handsome in a Greek Fayoum portrait kind of a way, innocent yet simultaneously knowing. He had very black curly hair, large blue eyes that looked filled with endless question. Liberal amounts of hair trying to escape up his neck from his t-shirt seemed to attempt to hide the embarrassment that looked routine to his introduction to any group. He looked up at Gloria with a half-comfortable version of chagrin and slowly lifted his left hand with a smile. He also happened to be uncomfortably aware that he was the model for what were marginal sketches gracing Amanda Blake’s mobile drawing in process. ********

G nodded at him with a blankly serious expression on her face, placed a check next to his name and said, “Thank you, David.”

As she paced restlessly around the room nothing seemed to escape her notice. At one point she picked up a candy wrapper that had a bug-eyed silly face on it. While walking about she folded the wrapper to look like it was framed by parts of itself. Taking it to the cork board she tacked it up so that the wrapper’s eyes were looking to the extreme left, so to view the word: ASSIGNMENT BOARD with what appeared to be not a little alarm. The board was hung at eye level and measured about four feet tall by about five feet in width, had not yet been cleaned of left over items from Spring Semester and Summer Five Week sessions.

Glo walked back and stopped next to the very small brown-skinned woman who was standing on a box placed on the drawing stool pulled up near to the wall. The girl stood with her back to the class and to Gloria; oblivious to everything but the drama students out in the sculpture yard, which she could only see by peering over the high window ledge. She sketched quickly, turning the page after filling the one previous with gestures of the rowdy class outside and below the window.

“May I…?” G asked.

“Hmmm? Oh, sure.” The dark-skinned girl said as she handed the sketchbook down to G somewhat shyly.


She stuck her pencil behind her ear then stepped down onto the stool and then to the floor, deftly, wiping her hands on her shirt. As she did so she looked across to Elyria and Amanda with raised eyebrows, and a little shrug that may have had some guilt in it. Glad at her fortune with getting G’s undivided attention, if only for the moment. she stuck her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and waited expectantly.

G looked back through the half-completed sketchbook. Scanning carefully this the day’s drawings, quicksilver linear sketches that captured movement with the least amount of strokes, interpenetrating spaces between the figures used or left skillfully. Glory wrote some notes on a sticky pad she pulled from the deep pocket of a her over-jumper and stuck them near certain drawings that she found to incite her comment. She gave the sketch book back to the student who was already climbing up to proceed at the task that had so completely absorbed her.

Turning away from the climbing student, G walked across the front of the room between the two doors on each end of it. She leaned for a moment on the cork board on the eastern wall, just below the sign posted there that said CRIT BOARD in bold block letters.

She stood erect looking at the board tapping below the sign with a continuing rhythm that seemed to spring from within her as she formulated some thoughts to relay to them. She stopped tapping long enough to look back at the student standing on the drawing bench again, on the other side of the room, again rapt with concentration as she looked out and down to see her subject matter cavorting in the Sculpture Garden below.

“Good work, Jenkins, keep up the good work.” Lifting her voice she directed the remark toward the girl who was now oblivious to her entirely, at which non-response G smiled broadly.

“This board is open for everyone’s use, to post finished works for observation, review and to compare with the work of your fellows. When this wall is filled we will spill out into the hall with things, until there is a lack of space, at which point I will schedule what I call a “Clearing Critique.”

A Clearing Crit is one in which items will be pulled from display that can be dispensed with, for good reason which, if I am doing my job right, you will understand by the end of that class crit period.. It is these kinds of discriminations that are as much a part of the art process as the making of work, perhaps more so. Though there will, I hope, be ongoing criticism between you, since I do encourage this strongly, I hope you will read the guidelines I have delineated for you, which you will find posted on the assignment board inside of a couple of weeks, though some of my former students might be willing to share their former or past crits, several different crit copies are around from former years, (((((((with new students in the meantime.

“Final crits from me are sometimes hard to get, as my veteran students will no doubt tell you in glowing detail and maybe the occasional exaggeration.

“Meanwhile, I have students with whom I find it nearly impossible to get to see their work. I have one student who only lets me see his XXXXXX required assignments. You will find that the bulk of your grades will be determined by your resolutions to the assigned problems, for instance the design and fabrication of your own personal art supply carrying case, pack, cabinet, work box whatever you end up building that will solve the problem of how you transport your supplies as well as your completed work to and from class, to and from the studio classes that you will have in addition to your classes with me.

The truth is that I am always interested in your work, though it may not appear to be that way to you. I will write on stickie notes and place them on the back of your work placed in the public viewing areas, occasionally, it’s important to respect each other’s privacy with the use of these. While each of your opinions of each other’s work is based on an open review of what is hung during formal critiques with me, I encourage you to speak openly with each other about what you see. However, the written comments that I place on the backs, are to be left between the student and myself. Is that clear?”
______________________________________________________
Noone spoke, people began shifting in their seats, some standing up to stretch and looking over at others who were already working at their places.
There was a general flutter and droppage and pick it up and fix it sound in the room that was suddenly wordless. Eye contact was made and dropped, materials shuffled, someone took a large blank piece of rice paper climbed up a moveable staircase that sometimes went with the model’s set up, stood reaching up to tack it to the window.

There’s something so beautiful about rice paper when it is seen with a strong light behind it that left the owner of it standing there just looking at it, unwilling to make marks upon it. The sun was at just the angle to the pine outside that bubbles of light fell through the needles, landing on the rice paper so that each was a pale rainbow unto itself.

See, here’s the thing about art students. I’m talking about the dedicated ones, now. The eyes inevitably become so educated along the way that the simple act of seeing what the world offers is very nearly as important as trying to relay that vision onto any surface, be it rice paper or any other.

Often, the materials themselves are perceived to be so wonderful, so lovely, so absorbing, it happens that just to look at a favorite color (in G’s case the colors would be Prussian blue and Cadmium Red Light) is enough. Any color combination, too, that might be splashed on any surface can be more than enough to send the art scribe in question off into a kind of living dream.

G: &**
“Clearing crits with me are periodical and happen when I see it as necessary or useful to you folks. Just about any or all analytic or synthetic art discussion is encouraged between you in detail and on a continuing basis. If we can encourage civil discourse between one another it may be possible to keep things a little less cluttered, but not necessarily. The point is not to talk each other off the wall but to perhaps do the opposite, depending….

“Anyway, if it gets crowded and cluttered that’s ok too, really. The more we have to look at the less we begin to see any one piece as so precious that it cannot be tossed aside to make room for something new or different or more highly resolved. I would like to caution you not to discourage one another or to be critical in such senses that lead to confusion or ”

She walked around the room as she spoke, stopping to look out the window abstractedly. The pines rimming the sculpture court were bending with a strong wind and the air was blue with a storm that was blowing up from the east. She stopped behind Amanda Blake who was now intent on a likeness of the young man on the other side of the room who had a particularly strong jaw line. The young man had noticed the intense stare penetrating space between she and he during the time that she had been sketching his features. He had begun to squirm and ultimately moved so that it was more difficult for Amanda to see his features. In point of fact it was only a marginal sketch, barely a beginning study of the face. When he made himself less available to her view she went on to do a head to toe sketch that emphasized the turn of his torso, again in the margins around the page which was dominated by varying sizes of cubes and empty box frames which were suspended from two points located above them.

Glory noticed the dynamic ocurrance between them and stopped to look more closely; she could see that the girl’s main interest was in thinking through the centrally located pair of mobiles on the page in her sketchbook. The mobiles inhabited common space in which they would hang in such fashion that their movements would interpenetrate each other as they floated about in space. A complex idea, not easy to keep the separate groups from getting in one another’s way while free floating in the shared spaces that they were meant to occupy. More difficult still, was making the idea look like more than some kind of a gimmicky Calder wannabe.

“I’m really glad to see that your still among us, Ms Blake. You have a fascinating idea going there, let me know if you want any suggestions, though it really does look like you have it mostly pretty well under control.” The young man turned a shade of deep crimson at G’s remark, no doubt thinking that something personal about him was involved in the drawing, when in fact he was only ancillary to it.

Amanda stopped her customary fidgeting entirely and fairly glowed at the remark, stole a look up to Elyria who was relaxing into her own work, but she did not miss the chance to beam at her friend’s drawing in a positive way.

Gloria walked back to the front of the room to begin to read off names of students on the list that she had left on the chair to the side of the model’s stand just before the sink where there were means to wash plastic paints in water, or pour off oil laden turpentine into containers placed there for that purpose.

“Charles Wintergreen.” G spoke the name rather than announced it as if to check his attendance because she thought he was not present. An older man wearing a golf hat lifted his fistful of pencils up so she would know who Charles Wintergreen might be and Glory looked upon him with disbelief. She missed a beat with the puzzlement involved in finding another Charles Wintergreen in her new collection of students, since the older fellow ///...placed a check next to his name, going on to call out another name she was interrupted by a disturbance just outside the west door. It was a loud clatter nearby and out in the hall. Next came a sound of someone grappling with the west door’s handle; someone having little to no success with it.

Everyone’s attention having gone to the sound of whoever was having such difficulty entering the room an apologetic looking older man with a long and very narrow face, got up from his position behind the model’s stand where he had been invisible to everyone including G.

Charles vibrant yellow tee shirt, over which was buttoned a stark black Mr. Rogers type of knit cardigan sweater accosted the eye when he jumped up to help the person at the door. His hat was worn backwards as if in lame emulation of the other young guys who were his peers in this context. But he lost the hat when the brim bumped off his muscular shoulders as he came out from behind the model’s stage in order to get to the door. In bending over to retrieve that he dropped a pen from behind his ear, and he went for that next. The door opened just as he grasped the handle and he looked directly up into the eyes of a thick lipped young fellow pulling what looked like a small closet.

“Hi, Charlie!” The young fellow looked backed into the room

It turned out to be an extremely tall remarkably disheveled looking guy pulling a kind of a dresser in tow. It was about as tall as he, having stacked layers of varying sized drawers and compartments, art materials affixed in ingenious ways. The thing was painted in various patterns on every available surface. Different drawings and paintings independent of one another were displayed all over the thing, each drawer’s face board had a separate and complete piece of work on it.

There was a kind of folded corkboard mounted on the back of the thing. It depended from three hinges that allowed it to extend from the top to the floor, in segments, if he wished, and which would fold out and tuck away in a manner as might be needed for the execution of any particular piece of surface work. It could be described as a closet and was moved by means of swiveled wheels on the bottom, so that it was possible to pull it by handles situated at differing locations and to slide it around from place to place. It could clearly be disassembled so as to be moveable as well as to be stowed away in a truck or car.

“This is Cliff, everyone, he’s our model, but he’s also an art student and so there will be times when he will be here in one or the other capacity, depending on the availability of department funds for models, and Cliff’s class schedule.

“Hello, Cliff, nice to see you. I see you’ve built another layer to your art chest. Is it more ungainly with the additional height?”




“No, it still moves the same way, Ms G, I just tripped over Margo out in the hall is all. She’s doing another floor piece out there.” He said as he took his sweat-stained shirt off. Walking up the steps to the model stand he draped the shirt over the chair that was perched there. Sinews and muscles rippled over his frame with each movement, thin is not the word to describe Cliff, emaciation might cover it, though. His veins were plainly evident as they played over the muscles and stood out in deep blue hues beneath extremely pale skin. His eyes were masked with nearly black lenses, when removed they revealed eyes as red as a white rat’s, and his nose was thin enough to echo this impression. Cliff Borzas was an albino.

“Ok, everybody, time for a break. I’m running down to the Kicking Duck for coffee, anyone wants to join me your welcome to, or not, as you please. Those of you who have been around for a while, please try to be hospitable to the new students. Those of you who are new here, it will behoove you to try to be forthcoming and patient with the older heads around here, you can ask them what the word behoove means, to begin with, in fact I insist on it.”

G stood there looking irresolute, then she crossed her ankles, then she spun around to look in the opposite direction. It was a little habit she picked up in an early dance class and had become something like second nature when she continued to use it in her martial arts classes. She had been introduced to martial arts by an uncle when he returned from the Korean War and she was about 9 years of age. Tai Chi or other martial arts were meditational forms to G. It was where she considered herself a perpetual student, though some of her instructors were never quite sure. She crossed her ankles once again and spun around once more:



“We’ll meet back here in about a half hour or 45 minutes.” Gloria said as she crossed her ankles to turn a third time finally just uncrossed them and walked out the door, throwing over her shoulder: “Maybe an hour….” The door closed with a quiet click and a sort of a sort of “flumph” noise.