New year, new semester new prof, teacher, instructor, tutor. Who was your best and worst artistic/literary mentor?
I've been instructing art for many years. I don't reach every student and for some I'm just 'good' or 'okay', but for others, I know I've made some sort of major impact (because they told me so). For me, my grade 6 teacher, Mrs Care (aptly named), who brought her guitar to class and wrote a goodbye song for us was my first important artistic mentor. She encouraged my early artistic endeavors with gold stars. My grade 10 and 12 art teacher, Ms Jones was an early inspiration in terms of technique, artistic expression and art history. Her specialty in printmaking gave me a whole different way of looking at positive and negative space, line and the idea of art being a one-off creation. My worst art teacher... it's hard to choose, was probably my grade 8 art/gym teacher. First of all, art and gym? Like I'm sure someone with these specialties is qualified. Anyway this teacher made us stand at the front of the room holding our artwork and then she'd say, "criticize!" Of course the whole class was silent, afraid to say anything. If they were too nice, they'd be criticized by her and if they were critical, their classmate holding the art would have hurt feelings. This teacher obviously hadn't learned the word 'constructive'. And she couldn't be bothered with such trivial matters as feelings. Also notable, I'm oldish and I still remember these teachers as if it were yesterday.
No need to name names, but feel free to share your best/worst artistic/literary mentors in the comments below.
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