Back around twenty years or so ago I was working as an art teacher at the Worcester Art Museum. If you’ve ever worked for a non-profit you know it’s not very lucrative. Part of my duties were to travel out to schools and do art classes for ones that didn’t have a budget for a regular art teacher. It wasn’t long before I did the math that the art museum was charging 3x what I was getting paid to provide this service, which in turn led me to cutting them out and charging it myself.
This lead to a parent contacting me in a fairly wealthy town to provide private art lessons to their pre-teen son. They felt he had a real burning desire to do art and wasn’t getting enough art education through his private school. I looked over his portfolio and thought he was pretty talented for a 12 year old so I agreed to take the gig. My memory isn’t all that great, I don’t remember having an interview with the parents, I don’t even remember the parents. I DO remember arriving at the address, taking the key out of the mailbox, disarming the alarm system and then working with this young man on his art when he came walking in about 10 minutes later after getting out of school.
This continued for a full season every Wednesday afternoon, and there would be a note on the kitchen counter for me which would usually have some kind of message like “we are concerned about his color theory ability” or “He’s not understanding Mid Century Modernism”— you know, normal suburban parent worries.
I liked the kid, he had talent, the trouble was he knew he did because he was constantly told that by teachers and family and he felt like at the ripe old age of 12 he had it all pretty much figured out. Start the acceptance letter for Pratt in Brooklyn.
This lead to some troubles because I would push him with an assignment, an assignment outside his comfort level which is truly the only way to grow, and he didn’t like being pushed beyond what he was really good atl. Those counter top notes would be my back and forth communications with mom, so in my response I would explain what I was asking him to do and why it was important for him to follow through.
At first, her replies were very positive, and she wanted him to get a real art education, but as we got further and further in he really began to fold and the notes would be excuses as to why he didn’t do an assignment. Then they got really strange. It started with a brief reference to whatever lesson we’d been doing and then include a casual “would you mind taking Rover out for a walk?” or “could you chop the vegetables and preheat the oven to 400 before you leave?” —??
I think I walked the dog, I like dogs and if they wanted to pay a dog walker $250/hour (that was what I was charging for private lessons) I was okay with that— but I stopped at chopping vegetables. My final note thanked her for the opportunity and a wish that the son would do well, but that if he didn’t learn how to push himself he could certainly fake his way through art school and come out with a degree, but that degree would be worthless because there would be no actual knowledge behind it.
I kept in touch with the young man and he reached out to me sophomore year at a lesser art school (his portfolio didn’t get him into the top schools) and he told me I was totally right and he wished he had seen it back then.
It was an interesting experience.