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September-October 2005 Selected Content
An Art Lesson at Artist Point - Ann Pedtke
We are at Artist Point in Yellowstone. From the dappled shade of the pine grove, we can look up the river to Upper Yellowstone Falls, see the afternoon sun burning on the yellow rock of the canyon walls. It is the second week of my family's trip across the West, and we are here at this overlook because my sister Julie wants to paint. She has staked out a bench with a good view of the waterfall, the scene framed on either side by gnarled pines. She has her watercolors spread out, her brushes, her jar of water. She is already dabbing in an outline of the cliffs.
It is then that the school group comes up the path. A motley crowd of fourth-graders, some in T-shirts and flared jeans, others bundled up against the stiff September breeze, they are not as noisy and excited as I would expect a group of kids in Yellowstone to be. Most are quiet and follow their teacher, a woman who walks with an air of authority and wears her hair clasped tight against her neck. I sit on a bench nearby and watch as the teacher leads the children to the overlook and settles them on the surrounding benches. All the kids have colored binders on their laps.
"Now, this is an assignment," the teacher reminds them. "This is not, 'I don't want to;' this is not, 'I can't.' This is, 'I have to and I will.'" Some of the fourth-graders sigh heavily, but they all settle down, open their binders and begin to draw the scene in front of them.
A little girl wearing a snowflake hat shyly slides onto the bench beside me. She looks up at the waterfall and then dutifully begins sketching the surrounding pine trees on her paper--small green triangles on top of more small green triangles.
I ask her if this is her first time at Yellowstone. She hesitates. "Well, yeah... but, I'm here with a school group," as if that cancels out the trip completely.
"My sister's drawing the Upper Falls, too," I say, gesturing to where Julie sits not far away, absorbed in her watercolors. "She draws wherever she goes."
"I have to draw it," the girl says resignedly, sighing as she looks back down at her paper.
I wonder what this girl would do if she were free to appreciate the place in any way she chose. Would she simply gaze at the falls and take in the grandeur of the scenery, or jot her impressions in a notebook, as I was doing? Would she play tag with her friends among the trees? Would she be most interested--and who could blame her?--in the chipmunk that sat nibbling a seed on a rock nearby?
"Does everyone have the green for their trees and the blue for their water?" the teacher asks, holding up a fistful of colored pencils. I glance over at Julie, bent low over her painting. Suddenly I am very glad that she has the freedom to color her water any shade in the rainbow, without anyone to reprimand her if she doesn't conform to someone else's idea of reality.
I am thankful that I am not pushed onto a bench by an adult and given explicit instructions on what to create and how to create it. In our parents' eyes, there is no wrong way to soak in the landscape. In the last two weeks, my brothers and sisters and I have seen Mount St. Helens, Yosemite, the Grand Tetons and the Pacific coast. Julie paints, Cathy takes photographs, I write, Ben and Tom explore among the rocks and try to make friends with the squirrels--no lesson plans, no assignments, no time limits. If I am inspired to write poetry about the coastal redwoods when I'm sitting on a hilltop in Wyoming, then that is the best time in the world to write it.
"Two more minutes, everyone," the fourth-grade teacher calls. There is a murmur of reluctant assent, and the girl beside me eases off the bench with a shy wave and goes to hand in her picture. I wish I could bring her here again sometime, tell her she could do anything she wanted to do. Maybe she would learn something.
The school group drifts away down the path. I take a few more minutes to appreciate the piney smell of the wind, the shadows sliding up the valley. Then I get to my feet to see how Julie's painting is going. She's almost finished, and an elderly couple is standing behind her, admiring her work. Her waterfall tumbles in shades of white and green, and some of her pines are yellow in the sunlight. It's a beautiful picture.
© 2005, Ann Pedtke
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