Everyone is an artist

Editor’s note: Sarah Pletts is a Colorado Mountain College community education instructor. 

What happens when you join an art class? Can you quantify the experience gained?

When you start to read this, pause a few moments and take stock. Look closely around yourself and identify three objects. Take a chair for example — most are the evolution of hundreds of years. The designers, wood crafters (the trees even!) and creators who dreamed them up all play a role. Over, say, three hundred years, there were several subsequent designers, wood crafters and artists who came up with colors and finishes. One chair.

Examine your favorite book. How many writers, editors, graphic designers, publishers, painters or illustrators put it into your hand?

Clearly, art is not extra. It’s an essential component underlying our lives. Exploitive and domineering people making loud noises would have us believe that art comes after a bank account. But it isn’t true. Art comes first. Art is making something from the uncensored stream of universal creativity knocking on the door of ourselves every second we live.

We here in the Roaring Fork Valley are fortunate. There are many classes available through Colorado Mountain College’s community education program starting in mid-May. Firstly, in Carbondale we have: drawing, painting, photography and a variety of classes in textiles and sewing. In Glenwood we have: improvisation with Theater Operations Manager Brad Moore, Butterfly Dreams in Crystal, Strawberry Days: A Summertime Jewelry Celebration, Cricut Fundamentals: From Setup to Finished Product, an adult acting class and Sketchbook — which is my class. What a lineup.

Good news for young artists, too. CMC offers three children’s camps beginning June 15 through July 31 at the Glenwood Center, in dance, drama, art, music and cooking.

The first art class I led through CMC was 40+ years ago, and now I offer “Sketchbook” to write and draw or paint. It’s for all levels. Your sketchbook is a journal. It holds each creator’s dreams, fears and expression. Prompts are given but are not necessary. One can share what comes up or keep it private. This class is for expressing one’s self continually in a supportive environment, and for problem solving with others.

Shown here is my watercolor of my Pratt painting instructor, Franklin Faust. He was a color genius. On a scholarship I studied painting with him for two years. One morning I was late and he glared at me like a quiet storm.
I was fortunate to study art, and wasting time wasn’t okay. I wasn’t late again. Art requires self-discipline. After saving up for months, I traveled to Italy and wrote this:

Renaissance Revival

And who do you think brings the brushes
and puts the paint on them?
Who mixes the paint, prepares the surface?
Who faces the surface, blank as endless time, and
dares to mark the surface?
Who sits in stillness, patient, providing the inspiration

—

is it a woman, a man, the calm sea allowing its mass to reflect the setting sun?
Who persists until the painting’s done?
Who has the courage to buy it and
hang it on the wall?
Who made the wall?
Do you think Michelangelo (or you?) fell from the sky,
unattached to the
human family
and do you think his angel body purchased a special one-way ticket, first class?
Do you think he put his feet up on the plane and
do you think no one sat next to him?
Do you think he wore suits of the finest cloth tailored only for him?
Maybe.
But he got paint on it.
Do you think that you could not own such a suit?
You can. But you must pay for it. Or you must know how to order it and
you must wait, no matter how long, for it to come in.
Perhaps the first suit is not so good,
perhaps the
knees bag, or it is too long.
Okay you have it altered. Or you alter it yourself and
then you pick up the brush.
That’s it, pick it up.
Wave it in the air if you like, I don’t care.
But pick it up, I implore you.
“What will happen?” you ask.
I don’t know. Does anyone?
There is one assurance though, life
feels different. It changes you.
Like a baby learning to walk, it takes you somewhere
each time. Could Michelangelo have known how many eyes would glance at the hand of God/Goddess touching one human in just one day?
Probably not. I think he just picked up the brush.
Do it.
I dare you.

Returning to a blank sketchbook page or a blank canvas again and again taught me to examine and love my world. Art is a challenging but rewarding life. Everyone is an artist. And art is a practice that can, frankly, save humanity from extinction. Studying art makes us sensitive and respectful of our Earthly home.

For a list of community education courses, visit coloradomtn.edu/community-education