Drawing out meaning...

I can't honestly remember what I was working on.

It was late in the evening after a long day.

And then....

Accidents will happen...

A three quarters full mug of coffee was spilt over the table, the sketch book, narrowly missed the phone.

It was a sketch book that had already suffered having numerous pages ripped in two.

All that bloody art...lost.

A flight of birds shredded...

I find some consolation and inspiration in Kintsugi.

"Translated to “golden joinery,” Kintsugi (or Kintsukuroi, which means “golden repair”) is the centuries-old Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a special lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Beautiful seams of gold glint in the cracks of ceramic ware, giving a unique appearance to the piece."

https://mymodernmet.com/kintsugi-kintsukuroi/

A moment of joy, a moment of anger, a moment of grief...

In taking the time to gild the grief, I find new meaning in my relationship to what was and what is.

"You lose only what you cling to." Buddha.

Working regularly has made me less concerned about what has been done before.

I note that many artists destroy their artwork.

Deliberate destruction.

I find an article in ART  telling a notorious story of destruction:

"Our favourite story in the long history of art destruction concerns American pop/conceptual artist Robert Rauschenberg. Early in his career, inspired by the work of Marcel Duchamp, he decided he wanted to test the boundaries of what could be deemed a work of art. Could a work of art be created, he wondered, through the act of erasure? He started out by rubbing out one of his own drawings. It didn’t work. He felt that the destruction of a not very important work by a then not very important artist didn’t really test his idea sufficiently. Rauschenberg decided the only thing to do was to destroy a significant work of art by a significant artist. And so, he gathered up the courage to show up at the studio of Willem de Kooning, a Dutch-American painter. De Kooning didn’t approve, but still provided a selection of his paintings to choose from, believing that young artists should be allowed to experiment.

Rauschenberg then took one of the master’s paintings away and tirelessly worked on the act of destruction, eventually erasing all visible traces of De Kooning’s image. He then took the now blank paper to Jasper Johns, his great friend and fellow artist and asked him to create a frame for the piece. Johns did as he was asked and produced a label which read:

‘ERASED de KOONING’ ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, 1953"

No use crying over spilt coffee...

I sponged up the coffee, put the sketchbook on the radiator to dry.

A couple of days later and I took time to inspect the damage.

Pages stuck together,

Sepia coffee stains had dried in weird patterns.

Suddenly I see the sketchpad and the accident in a new light.

Suddenly I see stories, landscapes, potential for play.

The deliberate accident in art.

After a couple of days of play, I find an article from the Tate museum on deliberate accidents and share it with my friends.

The deliberate accident in art | Tate #clmooc ⁦@NomadWarMachine⁩ ⁦@dogtrax⁩ ⁦@telliowkuwp⁩ ⁦@wentale⁩ ⁦@ronald_2008⁩ ⁦@amyburvall⁩ #febdoodle https://t.co/dSffN6rdgh

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) February 1, 2019

I realise that I have always worked partly in this way looking for meaning in apparent chaos.


I remember writing about how my mother would collect all sorts of objects with no obvious intrinsic value because she saw something in them., here in Driftwood curiosity:

"I am content you see no value.

I see myself standing on a beach.

You have left me quite alone.

Objects are washed up by the ocean.

Something catches my eye.

I bend down to pick it up."

Drawing means and drawing out meaning.

I am torn between drawing "well" from life and drawing out meaning from the abundant well of life.

I am torn between deliberate and accidental in my artistic acts.

I feel comfortable with what is accidental but also love the discipline of technique.

I find a quote of Camus.

"I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart." 
Albert Camus

Fear of silence.

I say nothing.

She wants to look from ahigh.

She sees much farther than me now.

She is a giant on the shoulders of a dwarf.




I take the photo in the only way that I can.

The moment is gone.

I feel caught between joy and sadness.

I fear we can not frame more than our shadows.

"Sustainable pedagogy."

I was thinking of those words this morning.

I was overcome with silence.

Night-line.

"Oh, I love silence," he had said to the counselling mentor.

She said nothing, she looked at him.

She said nothing, she looked at him.

She said nothing, she looked at him.

"What I mean is...."

His wordly confidence had left him stranded.

She said nothing, she looked at him.

Non-directive counselling.

It suddenly occurred to me that this moment had been foundational in my teaching practice.

Empathy

I was speaking with a friend this morning.

"The problem with feeling competent is that we can take on too much," he said.

"I ended up with burnout and depression."

I listened to him. I nodded.

I returned and sat to think.

Sustainable pedagogy...

What does it mean to be a sustainable educator?

I search for the foundations of the counselling training that I had received 30 years before.

It turns up Carl Rogers.

I found a conference on empathy.

I sat to listen.

I hear:

"The most effective listening is where you listen for the feelings and emotions that were behind the words..that were just a little bit concealed. Where you could discern a pattern of feeling behind what was being said."

I ask myself questions:

"What are the feelings and emotions that lie behind our actions words, as teachers/instructors?"

"What are the feelings and emotions that lie behind the words and actions of learners?"

"What are the patterns of feelings behind an 'educational system'?"

"What patterns of feeling do our rituals conceal?"

Fear of silence.

I return to listening.

I find a few quotes of Carl Rogers.

I note them down for future reflection.

"Colossal rigidity, whether in dinosaurs or dictatorships, has a very poor record of evolutionary survival."

I think of massive investment in 'educational content'.

What do those investors feel for learners?

I think of rigidity of teacher timetables, of programs, of systems, of assessment, of teacher assessement, of buildings.

What does such rigidity reveal of the feelings for learners and teachers?

"The degree to which I can create relationships which facilitate the growth of others as separate persons, is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself."

How on earth can our growth be measured?

Can pedagogy be sustainable if it does not accept change?

Are we really concerned about the growth of others or are we too full of our empty selves?

"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change."
Carl Rogers

What is it to accept ourselves?