It's time. Always dread this time of year. It won't be easy to say
goodbye to these seniors, many of whom have spent four years with us.
Seeing them every day, seeing them grow, physically, intellectually and
artistically, is one of the great joys of my position. I get to come to
work every day and spend time in the studios with our students -- I
often get to see them at one of those moments when they have created
something from the very center of their experience, capturing an iconic
moment in their development and in such a unique manner that I stand
there speechless. (I know ... many would say that is impossible!) But
that's what this school and faculty does for students: they are taken
outside themselves, or taken inside themselves, where they find new
combinations of experiences, new ways of connecting moments, visions,
sounds and ideas, that make us see and feel in different ways and show
us, as Shakespeare said, "… virtue her own feature … and the very age
and body of the time his form and pressure." When you are an artist, or
an artist becoming an Artist, you wrestle at the deepest of levels on
how to make sense of the daily bombardment of images in order to make
order -- to understand, at an aesthetic level, how all of the "out
there" can be constructed, manipulated, colored, moved, arranged, so
that making sense of it will help someone else make sense of it and
better understand their world and be more richly involved in it.
Artists connect to their world, up to their creative elbows in the
"stuff" of daily existence, and from that "stuff" give us, through the
power of their imaginations, work that celebrates our humanity.
These students leave us now, some going on into the arts, others seeking different paths, but what they have done here, no matter where they go or what they do, has become part of their DNA: FAC will always be with them, will always be a yardstick against which they'll measure their Becoming. They will be more adaptable, more tolerant, more compassionate, more understanding, and better able to seek creative solutions to complex problems than others. The arts do that. This school does that. Your student does that. Be proud of them, hold them close. We will, too.
