If your art work was good in my elementary or junior high schools, it was hung on the walls outside the classroom or elsewhere in the school for other students and teachers to admire. Mine, erasures evident and lines not quite straight and colors not quite right, was quickly slipped deep into a folder of work to be returned to students.
IF YOU GO
Who: ArtsBuildWhat: Showing of documentary film on the importance of arts educationWhen: Feb. 17 at 5:30 p.m.Where: Greenspaces, 63 E. Main St., ChattanoogaReservations: Call 423-756-2787 or email artsbuild.com.
It was clear early on I would never make my living in portraits and landscapes. Despite both my parents' talent for drawing, sketching and painting, my work was amateurish at best.
Yet, a couple of creations I made in art classes through the years -- sculptures in various mediums -- weren't half bad.
"Timely Towers" was one. Given various pieces of wood in assorted small sizes to choose from, and allowed to use paint for accent, we were asked to use our imaginations to fashion a work of art.
Selecting several base pieces and two foot-long pieces several inches wide at the bottom but narrowing quickly to less than an inch at the top, I created a work that resembled two skyscrapers side by side. Indeed, they actually resembled the World Trade Center that wouldn't be built in New York City for several more years. Red paint on the surface of several of the wood blocks offered a splash of flair.
That particular piece didn't win any awards, either, but it did win the teacher's praise.
A clay sculpture of a dachshund was my other masterpiece. Given along with my fellow students gray clay but few parameters on design, I created a relatively authentic representation of the long-bodied dog. Painted a golden brown color, which became nicely mottled in the firing, it looked like a miniature version of the real thing.
The only piece remaining from my elementary school art, it sits today among the tchotchkes on a large bookshelf in my living room.
Along the way, I also helped create puppets in elementary school that were later employed in a children's play at the former Eastgate Mall, a game with holes and pegs from a block of cedar in a junior high school shop class and a playing card-covered birdhouse that drew a nice sum at an auction.
Though I didn't have my parents' or my sister's talent in the visual arts, my exposure to them nevertheless added greatly to my imagination, visualization, creativity, confidence, patience and hand-eye coordination, to name just a few attributes.
Art was a part of my public school education, either incorporated into the classroom or as individual classes, from first grade through junior high school.
I can't imagine not having had it as part of my education.
Today, only 13 of 43 Hamilton County schools have full-time visual arts teachers, some of those funded by parent-teacher associations. And Chattanooga is the only major city in the state without visual arts teachers in every elementary school.
In 2008, the Tennessee General Assembly passed a bill that required each school district to include art and music education in grades kindergarten through eighth grade and to implement the art and music curriculum adopted the State Board of Education in classes as well as integrated into other core academic subjects.
However, no money was included in the bill, so the mandate went unfunded.
ArtsBuild, a local nonprofit organization which funds various programs to include arts in the public schools, wants the public to know how important visual arts are to students. The organization will screen a documentary film about the importance of arts education later this month.
The goal of the film is twofold, says Julie Jackson, director of development and communications for ArtsBuild. The first is to make the public aware of the programs the organization provides. One of those, Imagine!, funds every Hamilton County Schools elementary student in grades 1-4 to attend an annual professional arts presentation. The second is to "make people aware of the lack of funding that is available to Hamilton County elementaries for integrated arts in the schools."
Students, without a doubt, need to master the core subjects of English, math, science and social studies. But they also need the arts to broaden, deepen and heighten their academic experience. Study after study indicate they offer students -- especially students from low-income families -- a better overall academic performance, foster better attendance and elicit more participation in student government and math and science fairs. One study even shows that students who take art classes in high school score 100 points higher on the SAT college admission exam than students who do not.
Federal, state and local budgets are tight, but -- at this time -- art may be a better buy than one more round of tests.