Talent Emerges in the Classroom
ART THAT WILL EARN YOU A WEEK OF DETENTION
When high school students grow bored with traditional classroom methods and rote memorization, their innate artistic abilities often bleed through in effortless, semiconscious expressions of creativity. As a part-time substitute teacher, I have frequently run across such unexpected displays of talent.
Caricature of David Schmidt (author) by David Roy.
Some students, disinterested with traditional script, go so far as to write entire essays and book reports using graffiti-style “tagging” letters. (For a detailed discussion of graffiti as a legitimate though oft-criminalized art form, refer to Bob Bryan’s documentary Graffiti Verite.) While writing a mandatory list of “twenty facts I learned from watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” these multi-taskers are simultaneously sophisticating the aesthetics of their lettering style.
One day, I found a pencil that had been shaved and subsequently defaced with multiple repetitions of a single profanity. Yet this was no mere act of rebellion. The script was so stylized, the size of the vulgarities so varied—mommy and daddy profanities swam together with their little baby profanities in a sea of offensive syllables.
High school student David Roy produced a much less abrasive creation while I was substitute teaching his music class and created a skillful caricature of yours truly. Quite fittingly, David is a student at a San Diego magnet school that focuses on the creative and performing arts.
I suspect the depicted caricature won’t be his last published drawing. —DJS