It's usually about this time of year that I start thinking about how to make the most of that little window of opportunity that allows me to be a full time artist, called "summer vacation". As a full time high school art teacher, it's not often that I get to "do my thing", twenty four seven, for an eight week stretch. So when that magical time approaches my brain starts formulating plans to squeeze the most out of every free minute. I'm usually thoroughly drained and exhausted by the end of the summer and need a vacation from my vacation. That's a good thing. Each summer has been like a little ladder allowing me to hop off this plateau to the next higher level.
               This summer is particularly important because my school has been slated for closure and the next few years until I can retire promise to be very stressful. It's too bad because after twenty five years of teaching I feel like I'm really starting to hit my stride. I'm taking the recent additions to my training and incorporating them into my lessons. I'm excited, my students are excited, I'm really working hard to make sure that each student gets something useful out of the lesson, regardless of their skill level. My classroom has become an inner city Renaissance workshop, with students doing charcoal transfers, open and closed grisailles, glazes and scumbles etc;. All in a forty minute slot a day, with about thirty some odd students in a class. Sounds crazy I know, but somehow it works, and at the end of the day I go into my own studio and try to keep the energy going.
              A lot of my artist friends have been asking me what workshops I plan to take this summer. Grand Central Academy of Art has a lot of great ones going on, and it would be fun to paint or draw alongside some of the acquaintances I have made there, but I think I'm starting to feel a bit "workshopped out". The money that I would spend on a workshop could be used to hire a model for the summer, or get a better digital camera and learn to take better photos of my work, or travel to some great landscape painting destinations. In other words, I'm going to take an instructional hiatus, and dig deep into my own psyche to get a little closer to discovering the kind of artist I'm meant to be. I've acquired a lot of knowledge over the last few years and it's time to start putting the pieces together.
             I've already put one of my plans into motion. I talked my bi-montly figure drawing group into hiring a model once a week for all of June and July, one long pose, so that we could do some painting. Last summer I took a class with the same setup. I got five minutes of criticism a session for an amount of money that would have paid for a model to come to my studio every day. Not that the instruction wasn't helpful, it was, but weighed against what one can learn from more intense study, even uninstructed, seems like a no-brainer. I've already formulated a plan of attack. I'm going to draw with charcoal directly on the canvas, ink it in, and do the wipeout, all in the first session. The second session will be spent working up a thin, full color ebauche, and if there's time left over, I'll pick a spot and begin focusing on turning the forms. Sometimes when people see my work at one of the classes or workshops that I've taken they make remarks about how gifted I am. I want to tell them that my work looks the way that it does because I work my a** off. I'm grateful for whatever meager abilities I may have been blessed with, but I have scraped and clawed for every square inch. I use to think just the way that they did, that some artists are just born super gifted until I started really paying attention to what these artists were saying about their work and the sacrifices they made. Now I get it.
                    I have some ideas about doing some outdoor paintings this summer. Not so much the alla prima landscapes. It's not that I don't enjoy setting up next to a river or a glade and slashing away it's just that it's not really my passion. I think I'm going to stick to my own back yard. I plan to do a series of small paintings using my canoe or kayaks as props, possibly involving my wife (if I can come up with a bribe), and I also want to do some plein aire still lifes. Maybe I'll set up a tent as a little outdoor studio. I caught glimpses of things last summer that have been pinging around my brain all winter and now I'm ready to get them on canvas.
          So there you have it. I'm selflishly calling this the "summer of me" (I hope my wife doesn't read this, she thought this was the summer of "her"). If I can accomplish all of the goals I have set for myself, and my track record is pretty good, I'll be able to enter my classroom re-invigorated and able to handle anything the screwed up educational system plans to throw my way. All the educrats in the world couldn't prevent me from my pursuit of knowledge and the joy that I get from working with students who seem grateful to be learning from a teacher who's torch still burns.