I wish that all of you could
have spent some time with our Artist in Residence, Tim Christensen (class of 1987),
over the past two weeks. Along with Raegan Russell, he created not only an
engaging artistic experience in the classrooms but also a community art project
that will be completed in honor of our 225th celebration this coming
fall. Community members are being invited to engage in his preferred medium of
“sgraffito” in carving individual clay discs. Ultimately, these discs will form
a constellation-like mobile that will hang on campus next year. While I am
excited about all of that, I was more excited about the ninety minutes I spent
with him carving my disc.
Let me
state the obvious in saying I am not much of a visual artist. Tim prepped me
for the experience by asking me to think about the emotion I feel about Berwick
when I come to work each day or leave at night. Without even thinking about the
task at hand, I was asked to reflect upon an emotion. Then, rather than
illustrate a picture, I was told to make a mark. And then another mark. And
then to simply continue until my disc was complete. He said that there was a
conscious artist and a subconscious artist in each of us, and the subconscious
one was far more powerful. I asked him if people were putting their names on
their discs. The answer was no, but that the students he had worked with believed
that when they came back to Berwick fifty years from now, they would know which
one was theirs.
And so my
ninety minutes began. I never do anything for ninety minutes on this campus. I
was struck by the precision of lines I could construct by scraping clay from my
disc. I found myself mesmerized by the physicality of the experience and was
almost in a bit of a trance. My emotion was a flowing line, like my roller
coaster of experience at work that ebbed and flowed. Each rise in the line was
intentionally higher than the last valley, ultimately ending at the center of
the disc. All of my lines seemed to build towards the same destination with
some kind of centrifugal magnetism. I did not have a plan – it just started
happening.
But my
zen-like moment was not the best part. The best part was that after ten or
fifteen minutes of silence, Tim sat next to me with one of his pots and started
scratching on his own. He talked to me about his experience as a student when
his mother was a teacher here. He expressed that this kind of communal art
exercise would never have happened in his day, and that our students reflect an
amazing amount of emotional safety on campus now. He said that as much as he
enjoyed his time at Berwick as a student, he loved the school even more today.
We talked about the challenges of fatherhood and the stresses of work. We just
kept scratching, never made eye contact, and had a human connection that was
more textured than I have had in quite some time.
I am
looking forward to seeing the sculpture next fall.
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