from the Educational Director Around The Drawing Studio everyone knows there are no grades, certificates or diplomas, just a lot of really fine teaching artists offering a wide range of studio art skills to people interested in learning them. Even so, as enrollments grow and expand into new learning areas, I am more frequently asked, “why doesn’t TDS offer a curriculum like other places do?” A fair question, but one that begs another: “Exactly what it is we are looking for when we ask for a curriculum? What is a curriculum, anyway, and does TDS have one?” In common understanding, a ‘curriculum’ is usually a progression of steps laid out as a course of study by the certified experts of a specific school. After following a curriculum to its appointed end, one receives a public document (for example, a diploma) that certifies one has completed the curriculum in a manner satisfactory to the experts who designed it. In practice it may also imply, but seldom claims outright, an endorsement of competence from that institution. By this definition, the standard notion of curriculum is a guide imposed from without, a model which has always seemed to me inconsistent with art learning, in which personal expression adds a unique inner factor to defining a path to mastery. So I reframe the inquiry: what might a rigorous visual art learning path look like, if we take it out of the specialist context of ‘art school’ and into the general community, and in a form that makes visual learning accessible and broadly available to people of all walks of life? What leaps of imagination about curriculum might we need to make? What assumptions do we need to test or at least shake vigorously? Conventional education is rife with unexamined assumptions: a) the ‘quarter’ or ‘semester’ model, in which students are expected to be continuously available for several meetings a week over months regardless of their other obligations in life, with starting and ending dates locked into the habits of seasonal scheduling; b) standardized courses (and tests) that often assume students who are divided into peer group units (freshmen, sophomores etc.) with uniform needs and learning rates; and finally—a very prevalent assumption about art learning—c) that classes, especially those carried on without certified professors, grades or standardized progression through content, lack the rigor of serious learning, and are at best recreational in nature. Our approach to visual learning at TDS is both serious and rigorous, but we always start from wherever people are. My long experience as a teaching artist suggests that people usually first arrive with private agendas. Many entering students these days are responding to a vague need to get into the visual conversation, stimulated by the flood of visual media in our time. Others come from seeing the progress in a friend’s drawing and want ‘try it out’ for themselves. A few come to learn a single skill. Others sign up to resurrect an old art practice forgotten under a pile of life’s other obligations. Parents register their children for the developmental value of art, then end up registering themselves. But as we say around here, art is not a horserace. We notice that at some point along the way, each dedicated student eventually realizes that learning art skills is a much richer, more multi-directional, and very non-linear process. Whatever got them here eventually dissolves in favor of a deeper grasp of the opportunity. At that point, a personal curriculum of art learning begins to evolve, not from without, but from within, just in the course of the practice. Very little can be said of this curriculum in words, because this model of learning is concentric or radial rather than linear. Students may well start from their personal interests, and these interests will inevitably direct them back to the core of what they need next without any action from the outside. At this point, students who did not start with drawing fundamentals often recognize why our ‘core’ curriculum radiates from the practice of visual observation that originates with the study of drawing* and take steps to reorganize their pathway of study. Why do we consider drawing directly from the observable world the core of all other art practices? Because it develops the one ability that is at the center of any art practice, which to place oneself in a state of quiet attention to the learning task, for longer and longer periods of time. One might call it a meditative state, except that drawing from that state of attention poses a question that in turn provokes an active response: “What is it that I observe that is essential?” The response is not verbal, but a ‘mark’ on paper. Over weeks of coaching and skill practice, one’s state of attention becomes ever steadier. In this repetitive process over time, one’s practice deepens. By that I mean there occurs a subtle shift of personal ego from the effort to ‘self-express’ (art as a personal statement) to a more effortless state that ‘bears witness’ to what is happening rather than ‘doing’ the drawing. Occasionally time itself seems to disappear when I am observing and drawing, as my mind, my eye, my whole kinesthetic biology engage with what I see, not as an detached observer of the world over there, but as a celebrant of a visual world in which I am included. Sometimes it seems like I am not there, as my hand draws (‘manifest’=hand-made) the drawing. From this core experience of ‘attending’ rather than making, the possibilities for visual learning expand outward and naturally in every direction. Once this condition of ‘paying attention’ is internalized through art practice, what’s next (the inner curriculum) is obvious, although its form is unique to each person. For example, at TDS one may repeat the same course over and over because what is being learned is not a linear progression but a ‘deepening’ experience. (Repeating a course takes on a very different meaning than in a conventional school, where taking something over means you failed to ‘get it’ the first time.) For another person, passion for a new medium may be next; for yet another, one awakens to ‘hear’ an old teacher for the first time and wants to stay working with that person. One’s core curriculum may include a rhythm, alternating time alone for some inward work then returning to work with others to share new studio learning. Each personal curriculum is an adventure that is never over. But once the inner curriculum is awakened, it is the most dependable guide for what’s next, regenerating our learning spirit as long as we live and practice. If the Drawing Studio can be said to have a curriculum, it is as a resource that honors and supports each person’s inner curriculum, whenever, however, and at whatever rate it emerges.** Copyright Andrew Rush 2008 *However, I have always preferred the Italian word for drawing, which is ‘disegno’, a definition that encompasses both drawing and the abstractions that underlie drawing languages. **You will find a diagram in this issue to illustrate this core curriculum—although a more accurate model would be a three-dimensional sun-like generator, from which the many forms and ways of art-making emerge out of the core of light.
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