I guess I am getting old and soft.
I just finished watching the movie Mona Lisa Smile starring Julia Roberts. I am sure my eyes were moist five or six times during the film. Julia really touches my heart with her acting. She played the part of a young art teacher who set about to influence the young girls in a private well to do college. She wanted these young people to think for themselves rather the just regurgitate the traditional way of thinking.
The movie also touched me because I always wanted to teach art at a small college somewhere near a small town. I wanted to be a part of the forming and training of young aspiring artists and craftsperson’s. There is something special about influencing young and watching them grow and create. Perhaps I am just a romantic.
I could never find a position at college level as I was fairly along age wise when I entered the art community. I had just graduated university shortly before my retirement from the military. I was fortunate to be offered a position at a local leisure art school teaching basic pottery. It was a great experience yet I still longed for the teaching at a higher level.
Now I am not complaining. I was fortunate to have the opportunity during my military career to command a training school. It was always a moving experience when the young people graduated.
The Mona Lisa Smile was a good movie. There was young love, mature love, hatred, egoism, power and rebellion. It was a movie that played with themes that life throws at us. Maybe that is why I enjoyed this film. I think the scene that touched me the most was when Julia took her class to visit a gallery in the city. They arrived just as a Jackson Pollock painting was being uncrated. I like the art of Pollock. He was the subject of numerous papers that I wrote during my art history classes. So I agreed one hundred percent with Julia’s when she told her class to just look at the painting.
Now we can all search for the art of the great artists, but really now is it necessary? Etsy’s art community is so vast it is practically impossible to not find a painting, sculpture or a hand crafted item that is pure art in itself.
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