What Makes A Great Art Education

My first formal art education began about 40 years ago in the 7th grade. My instructor the late Frank Erickson structured an educational art experience that for years I likened to a comprehensive university arts program. The last several years I have come to appreciate that the experience was a combination of a structured program with the addition of considerable personal mentoring.
Frank himself a student of the University of Utah and a student of Utah’s LeConte Stewart built an arts program unique to the public education system. Students were introduced to the triad system of mixing color. Many weeks were spent making water color paintings on 4” x 6” pieces of paper using specified combinations of the primary, secondary and tertiary colors. As students gained an understanding of the basics they were allowed and encouraged to move on to the joys of oil painting and sculpture.
Frank really went the distance in mentoring students in oil painting. He scrounged up wood pallets with the assistance of Jan Denbutter the schools custodial manager, also himself a superb and gifted artist. The pallets were hauled to Frank’s home where at the end of his driveway tirelessly he would rip the wood into stretcher bars for the students to use for stretching canvass for their oil paintings. He was always making note of the caution required to avoid those “damn nails”.
I can only imagine the hundreds and hundreds of lineal feet of stretcher bar material he provided to students over his many years of service at Salt Lake City’s Granite Park Junior High School.
The stretcher bars were only one element of the process. Salvaged army canvass and seemingly bullet proof lacquer used as primer and gesso were also available at no cost for the students to use. Cutting the stretcher bars, stretching the canvass and priming the canvass are fundamentals I still enjoy today.
The basics and more advanced technical aspects of the oil painting process I learned were not all regimented or structured lessons. The fun and enjoyable aspects of the creative process were also identified and practiced and shared. Weather permitting outdoor painting and drawing was encouraged. Frank was always detailing out the roads and byways traveled to paint outdoors.

The aspect of art that is the focus of the Wasatch art blog is that of sharing and learning the enjoyment of the creative process. Ultimately a great art education is a combination of knowledge of technical skills that an artist can employ in different ways through the creative process. Most of all though enjoying the process, socializing working and exchanging ideas with other artists all come together in different ways at different times to make for great art experiences.
For more information and to learn how I personally use art as outdoor recreation please visit my blog:
http://easelbrushbus.blogspot.com