Dear Subscriber,
I hope you're having a fantastic day doing something you love!
Jumping ahead by about twelve years from last week’s story about my first thankful Thanksgiving, I had gone through a divorce, a move and most of the Elementary Education program at Casper College. Choosing major seemed like a good idea at the time because it would give me the same schedule as my kids once I graduated and found a position.
Working a part time job and taking on more than full time classes, including summer semester, I moved through the program quickly. However, the further I progressed, the more I felt like a fish out of water. It was prickly and dry and sometimes left me feeling like I was gasping for air.
Needing to fulfill the fine art requirement for the Elementary Ed degree, I enrolled in Drawing I.
Walking into the Visual Art building brought back such wonderful feelings of comfort and familiarity. It smelled good too! Paint, turpentine, paper, printing ink, and all the other smells I hadn’t smelled in so long enveloped me as I stepped across the threshold. Sometimes you don’t realize how much you’ve been missing something until you are there again.
Despite all the good feelings of being there, I was nervous about finding out if I could even draw any longer. Does one lose that ability if one doesn’t use it? It had been over twenty years since I’d been in a place like that and tried to do any serious drawing.
The wood benches were awkward at first. They were made to straddle and lean your drawing board and paper up against the tall front. You had to lean forward and draw in a very upright position. After a couple of weeks it felt comfortable and to my utter delight I found I could still draw!
Toward the end of the semester the instructor called me up front to review my portfolio. Going through it he asked about my major. When he found out it was Elementary Education he asked why. He admonished me to consider changing my major to Fine Art because in his opinion my ability was at the level of the top ten percent of professional artists. I was shocked, but oh so happy!
The next day I changed majors! I took art classes exclusively from that point on as all the other requirements, and more, had been met.
