Art News, of sorts. | Issue #17

First off: Happy Valentine’s Day to all you lovers out there!

I am writing this February 7th, the day after my birthday and I have to say that we’re on the third day of sunshine in a loooooonnnnngggg while. It’s quite lovely and The Universe is really making both my birthday week and my life extremely happy!
In fact, when I came out of the gym on Monday in my shorts and gym shirt in 20 degree temperatures, I was extremely close to sitting down on the grass for 5-10 minutes in order to soak up some of the sun!

Questions Answered

Where did your artistic journey begin? (Part 6 - 3rd and 4th years of high school)

Let’s see, I gave a general overview of my early high school life last time. I left a bunch out, mostly “the dirt.” As an example, that beard of mine, as sparse as it may have been in places, did allow me to buy beer occasionally at corner stores around Burlington when I was 16. The drinking age had been raised in 1985 from 18 to 21. Not enough time had elapsed by the time of was 16 (three years later) for everyone to take it seriously. Plus, there were homeless people around who would buy beer for us if we paid for something for them to drink. But I digress. Some of the things I did as a teenager were not well thought out, as many teenage decisions often go. I’m glad I lived through it and I also learned quite a lot from my experiences, even if they weren’t always the healthiest choices.

At one point in either issue 15 or 16, I mentioned how I had begun to hang out in the AV (Audio Video) room. You may recall Dan, Dan, the AV Man. I wanted to become more involved in audio and video. I was somewhat reluctant to though, as the kids who wheeled TVs and the adjoined VHS video tape decks were often made fun of, at least in the classes I was in. (This was well before digital displays in every room, no one had anything close to a cell phone as we know them to be today, and most kids carried a few coins in case they needed to make a call home or to a friend via a pay phone.)

Now, even though I was reluctant to be part of that group because I was a bit afraid of being a social stigma. I had decided to stop doing the high school chorus (the teacher, Mrs Moore passed away from cancer that year and it affected most of the school in one way or another as her husband also worked there and they were both great people and really wonderful teachers.) I didn’t care, at all, for the new chorus teacher, so I began searching for other things to do instead of chorus. There were some quirky fun people that hung out in the A/V room and I was learning more about video and taking photos with film. I seemed to naturally fit in and my focus turned to learning more about video and photography. It actually turned out to be a good thing in the end because I seem to recall that being involved in the Audio/Video room/group was how I piqued the interest of one teacher, Mr. Greenwald.

Mr. Greenwald was an English teacher at my high school. He looked pretty much the same as many of my teachers at the time. Button-up shirt, tie (not often), slacks or jeans. He was a bit more liberal than some, at least socially. He was actually a pretty strict teacher in his classes, who really made you work and learn how to write and discuss a wide plethora of subjects.

I don’t actually recall if I was in one of his classes or not at that time. Sometime or other in my second year, he asked me if I would be interested in taking photos for the yearbook in my third year. The yearbook class was only made up of Seniors at that time. He was trying to change that by expanding the class. There was some discussion and he said he had picked out two promising students to join the yearbook class in their Junior (3rd) year. I was one of them.

I seem to recall being worried about getting roped into writing a bunch. I was more interested in taking photos at that time.

It turned out that’s why he wanted me in the class.

I think my parents encouraged me to and I decided that I would do it.

Anyway, I ended up being one of only two Juniors in what had previously been reserved for Seniors. Some of them weren’t terribly happy and openly complained for a while the next year. I don’t think Mr. Greenwald had actually told any of the Seniors that a couple of Juniors would be joining them that year. It was a bit awkward for a while. By that time I actually knew a few people in the class ahead of me. A few were there and didn’t seem to mind. It ended up working out quite well. So well, that I ended up becoming the yearbook editor in my Senior year. It was a lot of hard work and there were weeks during the fall of my Senior year that I would show up at school at 7 am and leave around 6:30-7 pm. Looking back, it ended up being one of the best experiences of my life.

That’s not the last of Mr Greenwald though.

I had decided to drop Honors English ( I was also enrolled in Harvard Project Physics and was more interested in that ) after the first week as the teacher went on and on about how hard her class was going to be.

It became clear that I probably wouldn’t be able to succeed in that class at the same time I was enrolled in the physics class. Plus, I had a job after school in Burlington and about three days a week, I worked in a health food store run by a man who had converted to Sikhism named Sat Purkh. I had decided around the end of my second year to leave 242 and go work just down the street at the health food store he owned.

In place of Honors English, Mr. Greenwald convinced me to take an English class that he taught, called “Utopia.”

The class covered books like 1984 by George Orwell, Walden by Henry David Thoreau, author and poet E. E. Cummings, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, and Beatnik authors such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. We studied various commune experiments that took place in the United States and why they worked or failed. I was a really great class, or at least I thought it was. It could have been because of my anti-authoritarian streak or possibly my interest in asian philosophy and religions.

I had some personal experiences that I won’t detail here that really opened my eyes to the fact that we are intimately connected to the rest of the universe and that many things our societies and churches teach us are…well…not always the truth or in our own best interests. (Studying the Spanish Inquisition didn’t exactly sway my opinion to the side of “The Church.”) Don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking anyone’s personal beliefs here, I’m just saying that I had some very personal experiences that caused me to approach anything I’m told by anyone with caution.

Harvard Project (HP) Physics in high school was a strange scientific anchor point for all of this other stuff going on. I had chemistry in my 3rd year in high school and had a pretty good grasp of what was going on, especially how to use the formulas being presented. As a result I had been encouraged by teachers and my guidance counselor to enroll in HP Physics. I was a natural. I ended up helping other students in my class with a bunch of stuff. Particularly, memorizing and applying the equations. I did well enough that I only had to take the first quarterly exam because I tested out of all the other exams via all the other regular tests and quizzes. Many of my peers were not enthused about it. Particularly because the teacher couldn’t really “grade on a curve” due to my high grades. They weren’t happy. Though it was mostly the preppy kids who looked down at my combat boots and long hair.

Art classes were fun and I was beginning to realize that working with clay and objects (remember the stones around my neck) and making things with them. I wasn’t always really sure what to do with everything. In many ways, I still struggle to believe that anything I make is interesting to other people.

You may recall that I had been introduced to gemology and mineralogy (I never really studied that though outside of looking up how crystals supposedly affect your chakras) and The Lord of the Rings earlier in my life. As such I began to learn more about, and incorporate, Runes into some of my art. I even made a set of Rune “stones” out of terracotta in an effort to do some fortune telling with them.

Between the interest in photography, opening my mind and heart to creating art using clay, the interesting American literature classes, the music I enjoyed, my counter-culture attitude, being the yearbook editor in my fourth year, and an aptitude for physics, there was a lot that I was learning and discovering that laid the groundwork for college. Maybe, even my life.

What’s interesting to me is that right after the high school graduation ceremony had ended, I suddenly felt left out. I had really resisted and refused the idea of a celebration with my family. So afterwards I went around to friends to figure out where the party was happening and suddenly realized that they were all going off to celebrate with their families. It was a very odd feeling. Sort of a denouement, if you will.

And that’s how my high school years ended. With an odd deflated feeling, despite everything I had actually managed to accomplish.

News of late

• Things have been pretty quiet on my Tuesday evenings in the Generator jewelry studio. Having said that, there are some wonderful upcoming jewelry workshops. If you’re local to the Burlington, VT area, I highly recommend checking them out!
• I’ve been slowly creating vector art from my pencil drawings of knotwork in order to create some laser cut earrings.
• The tests from Vermont Awards & Engraving came out really well and I’m going to be getting some 16 gauge sterling silver to create some really nice engraved bracelet cuffs! (16 gauge is 1.3mm thick)
• I finally flipped the switch on my website and now I’m a happy Shopify shop owner. Having worked on two different web store platforms really taught me a lot about what my own needs are as a former web developer.

In the Works

I am currently feeling extremely relieved that I have switched away from my original web store platform provider. I was doing my best to maintain two websites with content and it really was taking a lot of time away from focusing on making jewelry. So much so that I don’t have much to sell right now. That will change.

Until next time,
Justin