Sabbatical Ended

Even though my sabbatical leave was for the academic year 2015-2016, I continued to work on projects and take courses this summer.  But today was Opening Day at Berklee, and so it is time to get back to regular life, and having to juggle to make time to finish projects.  I doubt there is a better way to re-enter after a sabbatical than a Berklee Opening Day, with its focus on music, people, and community.

The short version of my sabbatical outcome is that I did many of the things I planned, and discovered valuable modes of learning and creating in places I didn't expect.  The biggest surprise for me were the 7 art courses I took (Animation, Introduction to Drawing, Beginning Drawing, Mixed Media, Colored Pastel Workshop, Abstract Painting, Beginning and Intermediate Drawing).  I started by taking a traditional Animation course at the MFA, to give me a solid start before I dived into 2D and 3D digital animation.  Between enjoying being in a class and realizing that animation would be easier for me if my drawing and illustration skills were stronger, I decided to take a basic drawing course.  

One time drawing in the galleries at the MFA and I was hooked.  I know the museum fairly well.  I've been bringing students there since 1998, when I taught at Emerson, before I moved over to Berklee.  I've worked out arcs for each class meeting we have there, incorporating whichever pieces are on exhibit and special exhibitions, but repeating the lessons semester after semester.  However, being in the museum in a different way than teaching, spending intensive time with works that I've never paid much attention to before, concentrating to the point of losing the self-consciousness of drawing in public surrounded by masterpieces reinvigorated my connection to the museum, and will change how I introduce it and the art to my students in LAHS 333: Approaches to Visual Culture.

Being a student always strengthens my teaching.  Even sitting in the student seats in my classroom when they do presentations not only shows me their perspective in the physical space, but reminds me what it's like to take in information.  The experience of the art classes made me understand what it's like to be a beginner, to really not be sure how to proceed, and to need to have a teacher show me or help me or guide me in seeing what he or she saw. Sometimes I would glance around and see that other people were further along than me, or better, and I had to shake that off to continue.  Sometimes I got so frustrated that I had to stop, walk away for a moment, and then start again.  Many times my drawing was going along well until I added or erased too much, and without the undo commands on which I've come to rely, I couldn't restore the previous version.