Where the Art Began
Recovering addict, Jonathan Casey, reflects on his first experience with art and the impact of mentors throughout our lives.
When I was about 7 or 8 years old, I started to make little potpourri sachets out of the scraps of fabric I found in my mother’s sewing room. I sold them to the old ladies at church. I started collecting things then, all sorts of things — lost buttons and random fasteners; rocks that seemed to shimmer through a rough, dirty exterior, holding the promise of a hidden gem underneath. It wasn’t that I wanted to own them. I collected things because I wanted to see what I could make.
I spent summers at the YMCA growing up. My mother tried to sell it to me as a summer camp, but it really wasn’t. It wasn’t a camp at all. It was a babysitting service for parents who had to go to work, who didn’t vacation at their family cottage in Canada for the summer. This is not to say that the summers at the Y weren’t grand. I had everything a kid could want — multiple sport fields, recreational activities, an in-ground pool. At 10 and 2 every day, we got to pick from an array of snacks — gummies and miniature chocolate bars, Fritos and Lay’s Potato Chips — the kind of snacks you’d never get at home.
But, my favorite part of all, of course, was arts and crafts.
Each week we did something new. It was always exciting. We made tie-dyed t-shirts and paper-maché animals from balloons. We watercolored flowers and cut up magazines to make collages. Twist ties and pipe cleaners were such an integral part of my summers growing up that I sometimes get nostalgic for little bits of colored fuzz and glitter, stuck all over my fingers and hands.
It was different during the school year. I was bored to the point of annoyance. It was difficult for me to concentrate, sitting still, and I grew frustrated when teachers demanded my undivided attention. My brain has never worked that way.
The report card comments started off positively — “Jonathan is a social butterfly” and “Jonathan is expressive and communicative” — but by the time I got to high school, my behavior was deemed no longer innocuous. Instead, my parents were informed, quite regularly, of my “lack of focus and attention” and “frequent disruptions of the classroom.” It wasn’t until I took my first elective, as a senior, that I found out what school had meant for me.
Mrs. Marchese was the quintessential high school art teacher. She was cute and spunky, with a roundish middle-aged figure. She had a full head of curly brunette hair, streaked with artificial highlights. Her glasses hung from a colored macramé string around her neck. She always had some sort of creative outfit with a colorful scarf draped fragrantly over her shoulder. I was infatuated with the drama of her presence. The fact that she had a presence.
Mrs. Marchese’s classroom was surrounded by metal shelves, overflowing with projects in all stages of development. There were ceramics, clay statues, and wire creations, all piled on top of each other, waiting to be finished by students or discarded in order to make room for others. Hanging from the ceiling were dreamcatchers and giant piñatas — the chaos of it the environment delighted me. The art room was like no other place in school.
The excitement on Mrs. Marchese’s face on the first day of class is vividly etched in my memory. She looked as though she was about to burst, even though all we did, for the entire first month, was look at slides, of different famous works of art. But Mrs. Marchese always asked us what we thought about it too — what did we like? What didn’t we like? What did the art make us feel or urge us to do? I hadn’t realized this sort of discourse was an option in school.
A sense of freedom developed for me that year.
All that energy I had — the kind that disrupted and interrupted and caused disturbances elsewhere — was now directed, into creating. New things. Different things. My perpetually busy mind had an outlet in Mrs. Marchese’s room. I felt giddy, and yet trepidatious, each time I arrived for class. Mrs. Marchese was welcoming but firm. She never told you what to do, but rather, suggested it. What a world this opened up for me.
Basket making was one of our big projects that semester. The finished product would account for 1/3 of our final grade. Mrs. Marchese put on a film, about the history of weaving, from Africa to the Amish, and then set us loose. There were so many possibilities and ways to make it our own. This was the first time a school project had invited me to think, and I was honestly, a bit lost.
At first, all of the options were daunting. Thick or thin weave, different types of material, adornments, a hundred different ways to weave natural fibers together to create something entirely different and new.
I felt I had to try it all. And, so I started, and then I stopped. Again and again. Ripping out today what I had done the day before. I felt overwhelmed and discouraged. All the freedom I had been seeking, and I couldn’t handle it. Mrs. Marchese encouraged me to play with my art, mixing in darker colors and creating texture with fabric weaved in with the straw. I didn’t realize it at the time, but she was showing me how to play with infinite possibilities.
My final project made it to the Albright Knox’s student display.
Mrs. Marchese was thrilled, and so was my mom. The whole thing turned into a pretty big deal. I was named Art Student of the Month, across all grades and all schools. My mother and I got dressed up in fancy clothes and went to the gallery for the opening. I don’t think I had ever seen her more proud.
Art does something for me that nothing else has. It gives me permission to explore the unknown, to solve problems and create something out of nothing.
I am so grateful to be able to use what I learned in Mrs. Marchese’s classroom still to this day. The process of creating art is often solitary, but when it comes to working on public art projects, something I do pretty regularly now, it’s a process that often reminds me of my senior art classroom.
There are so many possibilities, so many ways to reach people and connect, so many ways to communicate sentiment.
A belated thanks to Mrs. Marchese and all the art teachers of the world, for inspiring those of us who can’t sit still, to do something productive with our energy.
