Inside Out

I  am currently volunteering at Visionaries & Voices, a non-profit, Cincinnati organization whose mission is to give artists who are disabled the support to develop as professional working artists. I mentor a young man who loves music and art.

This experience has triggered in me many questions about the evolution of the artist. When a young artist commits to an art school education, the assumption is that the student understands that the school has a mission, the mission drives a curriculum, the curriculum is certified so the BFA degree means something in the larger world, and the student has bought herself a measure of credibility.

When in that process does the school know best what is needed for an artist to succeed in the larger world? How does the curriculum know how to allow the student to become an independent thinker within it? How does the student artist come to know what is necessary to learn?

The obligation of the school is to bring the student to the realization that the world is as open to him as he wants it to be and to prepare her to act on that.

But what happens to the outsider artist? Should they follow a curriculum that opens the world to them based on some perspective they have to investment in? Do they take the lead, ask for what they need and we follow? To be the artists they are, must they stay trapped inside the outsider?

This experience has been a revelation to me. I hope that I can gradually begin to answer some of these questions.