Art or Dartboard?

My fifth grade teacher Sister Annunciation once smacked herself in the forehead with the palm of her hand, when she saw that I had again created a map, this one of the Liberian Peninsula, during our once-a-week, half-hour art session. 

The author of Mark's Work

“Why do you always making the maps? That not art. Why you do not draw real pictures?” Having only been in this country from Cuba for a little over eighteen months, Sister’s English was progressing nicely, even if I cared not for the message.

Surprised by the question I looked at my drawing, with its vibrant color, the boundaries of Spain outlined with deep red, and Portugal in yellow. I had shaded in the interior with the same colors, lightly, the colored pencils being employed parallel to the paper to efficiently shade in the entire country.

I had used black to print in the name of the capital and those of the major cities, and I had drawn the rivers in blue, the mountains in light purple. I had sketched a few imports and exports to one side, but only the surefire ones like oranges from Spain, or grapes from Portugal, nothing that required any actual skill to reproduce.

“This isn’t a real picture?” I had inquired, clearly confused.

No need to caption this: Cow standing under tree.

I had put genuine effort into it, I had stayed within my own drawn lines, and it was pleasing to the eye, or at least my eye.

“Every week you draw the maps. Draw different picture next week,” as though it were that simple.

“I didn’t trace it! It’s just that I’m not good at drawing other stuff; I like drawing pictures of maps. Am I in trouble?” 

“Arrrrgh! No, you not in trouble. But why not try different next time?” 

I had no frame of reference. Art was frustrating for me; some individual attention, or some basic how-to-draw-a-dog lessons would have benefited, but my class stood at 43 students. 

If that seems a lot, my little brother Tom was in a second grade class one year, at St. Martha’s, with 73 students in it.

I was not a kid who clamored for attention, not as long as I could conceal the book I was reading inside the geography book that the class was following. As far as I was concerned, any kid who couldn’t follow along with the imports and exports of Peru and Paraguay, and read Mark Twain’s “The Prince and the Pauper” at the same time, was not worth my attention.

But that has nothing to do with art. 

At the advanced age of 65, I am still in the stick figure stage of my drawing career, as far as any reasonable attempt to draw or sketch. I have an ongoing goal of taking up painting some day, when I get the right tutor, so that I can learn to paint a cow in a field, under an oak tree, one that is recognizable as such, without any prompting from me.

I wrote recently about sculpting a rabbit from clay, and how affected I was by the experience, way back in the summer of 1993. I was so moved, I retired as champion, in my own mind, having never worked with clay since.

I have never played a musical instrument, though I did acquire a drum last August and frequently let my hands do their thing while plugged into my Dr. Dre’s. A little “Dashboard” by Modest Mouse, or possibly “Heads Will Roll” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and I need no tutor to guide my hands. It matters not whether my beats match those of the artist; they match the ones in my head.

Art defies definition; one man’s art is another man’s dartboard. 

Art is humbling by definition because it is so subjective. In my case you can add that art is humbling because it is also objective; a dog can only look like a porcupine or a possum, if it is Dali or Picasso who defines it that way. Otherwise, go fish.

In contrast to being humbling, art can also be exhilarating. It can be structured or it can be carefree and borderless. What I may find touches my soul, you may find repulses you, aesthetically. The amount of leeway within the world of art is comparable to that of the world of architecture. 

Whether you’re dealing with mud huts, teepees and igloos, or skyscrapers and basilicas, it all fits under one handy umbrella, just as art does. 

Now I find myself immersed in woodworking art, a curious combination of precision mixed in with variation, a tantalizing collaboration of left and right brain centers. In creating the log-cabin quilt that I wrote about in “Off the Leash,” everything was parallel or perpendicular to everything else, and yet the different combinations that could have been formed from 468 pieces of wood, of six different sizes, were infinite.

I spent three consecutive days of around sixteen hours each, to complete the 42 by 92-inch wooden log-cabin quilt, and am thrilled with the result. Comparable to that rabbit sculpted out of clay, the feeling is all-consuming and most rewarding, simply because it was so unexpected.

Gluten-Free Mama is enthralled with the woodworking, I am stoked to have been able to pull it off and the only question of the day is, what would Sister Annunciation have thought? After all, it’s still not a “real picture.”