How Does Your Grass Grow?

"But Mom, my art teacher said you have to make grass straight," Bud protested as I colored in the floor of our cherry orchard.

I bet she says it has to be green, too.

It's no secret that I don't like his art teacher's approach--she has them copy her models exactly, down to the stripes on the snowman's scarf and the order of the sizes of trees in the landscape. It's the very worst approach to art education for children. (In fact, I'm not sure it's much better than no art.)

And so Bud and I explored artists who didn't follow the rules. Sure, traditionally, most artists learn the basic technique, often with a grounding in drawing. But then they go on to break with that tradition and do their own thing. And that thing, that style, changes. And for the most part, the artists who are famous, the ones in the canon that progresses in a seemingly evolutionary trajectory from Michelangelo to the modern day, are the ones who defied the artistic convention of their day. (Now, I won't get on my feminist or social historian high-horse here to talk about how it was early 20th-century European male critics who invented the canon in an attempt to imply that all important artistic roads led to, and therefore validated, 20th-century art.)

We looked at Picasso, whose fractured faces so clearly alter the tradition of portraiture. Bud liked his Blue Guitar, with its somber shades of blue, and his various Mother-and-Childs in different styles. We looked at Kandinsky, who stripped and veiled representations of towns and knights on horseback in order to touch a deeper spiritual chord. We remembered Seurat's dots and Van Gogh's swirls. (And yes, if you want to call me on it: I did just follow the canon right there, ignoring women and non-Western artists.)

Together, with scented and regular markers, we made several pictures: our cat Albus covered in Kandinsky's lines and colors; Mr. Big, the penguin, in the same stripped and veiled style; a Jedi lightsaber in dots; a portrait of Bud a la Picasso. He even taped paper under the table and made his own Michelangelo. Of course, we talked about how he didn't have to copy them exactly because it's okay to make his own Bud art.

It actually got me thinking: American parents spend a lot of time encouraging young children to love art and music. We buy and use art supplies together, covering the fridge and other spaces with pictures, treasuring what they bring home from preschool. We sing and listen to music and dance around the living room and play on homemade and store-bought instruments. We role-play stories and watch movies. We encourage them to tell stories, to use their imaginations. And then, after instilling this love of the arts, we turn around about a decade later and tell artistically-minded children not to pursue careers in art. As a culture we don't always respect or value musicians or artists or dancers or actors or writers. "Grow up and get a real job." How confusing.

So, I shouldn't be surprised if later Bud wants to be an artist. Until then, what I would like to see is Bud making a Kandinsky picture for his art teacher!