I Hated High School: Art Journey, Part 2

In High School I didn’t end up taking an Art class with the exception of a single semester of Photography in my Senior year. In High School I focused more on the music (instrumental and vocal); choir, chamber choir, county honors choir, marching band and concert band. In my senior year I was the VP of Tri-M, which is the music honor society. Being in Tri-M awarded me the ability to wear a pink tassel at graduation, which, at the time to me, was very cool; as it meant I had done something different and wasn’t wearing the same tassel as everyone else.

 

 

In my Junior year, I disliked High School so much that I wanted to sign up for concurrent enrollment for my Senior year. Attending High School for the first four classes of the day and then going to take classes at the local community college for the remainder of the day seemed like a great way to escape the High School social scene. I worked hard to maintain the necessary GPA to attain the concurrent enrollment status for my Senior year. Besides, if I did concurrent enrollment then Mom and Dad would have to provide me a car of my own to drive from the High School to the college as they could not possibly taxi me around. (Okay, so I had some ulterior motives for doing concurrent enrollment other than just getting an education.)

 

 

In High School I had what my kids now call a Padawan braid. (Any Star Wars fans out there? We just called it a rat-tail.) My best friend and I both had them and I kept mine well past my senior year.

As my Senior year began, I had a friend who was in Art School. A whole college devoted to nothing but Art I thought that was pretty ‘out there’. I thought it was so cool to be able to pursue a life as an artist but never thought of myself being “qualified” to do such a thing. I was encouraged to at least take a Drawing 101 class at the community college in my spring semester. I loved it so much that I declared Art as my major and worked toward a degree in Fine Art.

 

 

I loved all my art studio classes and my art history classes. Taking Art History finally made me appreciate my parents dragging me kicking and screaming taking me to Europe and forcing me to walk all over the place to look at boring old paintings and museums and architecture enabling me to see first-hand; great works of art, beautiful buildings, and captivating cities all over Europe. (My Aunt and Uncle living in Europe at the time made it possible for these trips as I was growing up.)

Again, in college, my favorite teachers were my art studio class teachers. I don’t remember any of my other teachers’ names but I could name for you all of my Art teachers. I lived for my studio classes. I got to be good friends with many of the “Lifers” too. Those were senior citizens that would audit art classes over and over just for the instruction and the fun of it.

 

 

In my second full year of college, I ended up following the same type of path as in my high school senior year of “doing something different” and attended a meeting and ended up as the VP of the Student Art League, then as the President of the Student Art League the following semester. (The guy I had a crush on described me as the “Art League President from hell”… but I got the job done. Let us remember that I didn’t come to know Christ until a bit later. We were different people when we first met. I am glad I was able to change his viewpoint as he is now my husband and best friend and we have four gorgeous kids.)

 

 

While in college I found that I really like watercolor. I had not painted much since childhood, most of my work was done in pencil. Pencil is cheap. I had never taken a painting class before college. Acrylics were okay but I enjoyed watercolor much more. I still have never worked in oils. Maybe someday I will become a “Lifer” at a local college and then I will take a class in oil painting. For now, Watercolor is my preferred medium when painting and I still work a lot in pencil.

 

 

If you haven’t read part 1 of my Art Journey, you can find it here.