Passionate Path?

The topic of passionate employment has been on my mind for a couple of years now (yes...years). As I quickly zoom my way towards forty, I contemplate whether I am truly following my life's path as a high school Visual Arts teacher. There are so many derogatory comments that go along with being a Visual Arts teacher; something about if you can't make it in the art world, you become a teacher, or something like that. Comments like that make me consider my life path and how I got to be where I am today. If I had really tried to get my Masters degree instead of dragging my heels into the Education Faculty, what would I be doing today? If I had dropped out of the Education Faculty when I wanted to (oh so desperately wanted to....) what would I be doing instead? Would I be waitressing at the Lakeview? Would I be living in Paris and taking sketching classes at the Louvre? Would I be living on the West coast and harassing Nick Bantock on a daily basis? Would I be running my own art shop or studio? Would I be a city girl or a small town girl? Or would I still be exactly where I am today?

This made me reflect on my first job. I was twelve years old, and my best friend Tina and I decided we needed some extra cash. (What the heck we needed money for, God only knows... New jelly shoes? New lipgloss? It wasn't until much later that we had to support our smoking and coffee drinking habit.)
So we started asking all of the businesses around town if they were hiring. We were a team, and as such, we had to work together. This was mandatory. Well, The Red Dog Motel and Restaurant didn't discriminate, and we were both given employment. Our job? Picking garbage in the parking lot for $2.00 a garbage bag and a free meal in the restaurant. (It's pretty hard to pick a full bag of garbage when you're basically picking up cigarette butts, so we would resort to taking garbage from in and around the dumpster out back. Brilliant!) I remember once walking home with $7.00 in my pocket and a hamburger in my belly. I learned a lot from that experience. The first one was that both Tina and I had to grow our hair long, because our boss thought that we were boys, and I think even referred to us as brothers once. Yeesh, talk about a blow to a flat chested, straight hipped Grade 6 girl's ego. But the main lesson I learned was that this job sucked really bad, and I didn't want to spend the rest of my life picking up other people's cigarette butts for a living.

I also had a job at a sporting goods store that consisted of dusting trophies. I don't know why the magical transformation of a dull, fuzzy figurine of a lady in a frozen bowling stance into a gleam of gold didn't whet my willie. But it didn't, so again, I moved on to another job. I remember the boss saying, "That's too bad. I was about to show you how to etch names on plaques for trophies." Whoopie. (As a side note, I think everyone should experience at least one crappy job in their life. I like to say to my students, "Do you want to be the one taking a crap on the toilet, or do you want to be the one cleaning the crap off the toilet?" I know it's a gross analogy, but it hits home. Then I tell them to get to work. It helps to put their education in perspective.)



It wasn't until I started working at a local framing shop in town in my high school years that I really felt that I was working somewhere that interested me. I was being immersed in the visual art of the area, constantly looking at the collection of original Woodland art that was in our small gallery. I remember we had an oversized Norval Morrisseau painting up on the wall for a while and I was in shock that it was painted on meat wrapping paper. It made me realize that art could be created on anything if you need to create. You didn't have to wait for a canvas. If the urge was there, you use what you have, and that's what he had. I learned about how to use a camera every time the boss was out of town by taking photos with the cameras we had in stock. Many photographers came in to the store and talked about their art, their process, and their inspiration. To this day,  I still talk to some of these people about photography. I was forced to listen to CBC radio (which at the time made me secretly curse my boss's name, but am so thankful for now). I learned how to frame art work and became a really good matt cutter, making v-lined matts, keystone corners, triple matts, inlayed matts, the works. I was a matting fanatic and filled the walls of the store with my creations. It was great. I was given carte blanche to frame whatever I wanted. I even made a matt with bevelled edges that looked like the edges of a stamp. It took me all day. But that's the thing....you know you're in your niche, that you've found something that you're passionate about if you're willing to spend all day doing it.

When I went off to university, my boss hooked me up with a framing store in the city. It was a disaster. I went from being a creative framer in my own right to an assembly line worker. I was cleaning sheet after sheet of glass. I would spend six hours straight just cutting foam core. Nobody would talk to me. They didn't listen to CBC radio. The boss's son would sometimes just stand there and stare at me in a really uncomfortable creepy way. They would make me throw the garbage in the dumpster, but they wouldn't put anything in garbage bags so I had to get really close to the dumpster just in ensure that the garbage wouldn't scatter all over the alley. The business next door was a bakery and they used to dump their grease straight into the dumpster, so I always walked back in to the framing shop coated in old bakery grease. I remember the boss telling me that they were going to "put me on the floor" and have me start selling framing to customers, but I didn't "dress appropriately" to be up front. I had resorted to wearing my shabbiest clothes to work because they were all coated in oil by the time I went home. I quit that job and moved on.

Then I started waitressing in the summers instead of going back to the framing shop. The pay was much better and I was able to pay my tuition on tip money alone! I did that for four summers and loved it. I thoroughly enjoyed the social aspects of it. I loved having to be on my toes, thinking about six things at once. Waitressing is an amazingly choreographed dance. I smirk at city waitresses that are alloted 4 or 5 tables for their shift. They have no idea. Some times I was the only waitress on the coffee shop side of the restaurant and another waitress worked the dining room side, and it would be FULL of demanding tourists wondering if we used "American style cheese" and what the hell did you put gravy on my french fries for? And we weren't just taking orders and serving meals. We also cleaned the tables, set the tables, moved the dishes to the kitchen, ran the till...the whole nine yards. I learned about tolerance and stamina as a waitress.

But nothing prepared me for my job as a teacher; convincing students of the importance of the Visual Arts, convincing other teachers of the importance of the Visual Arts, trying to persuade students to come to school, trying to get students to stop swearing like banshees, dealing with tumultuous emotions, calling parents that don't really care to be called, marking for hours and hours and hours, perpetual meetings, assessment coming out of the ying yang, stacks of papers that don't really fit into any labelled file folder. WHY AM I DOING THIS AGAIN?

It comes down to this. When you push all of that crap to the side, what you're left with is people that are given a different perspective that they perhaps may not have thought of before. I revel in hearing statements like, "I can't believe I just created that! I didn't think I could do it." I really cherish seeing a student drag their friends in to the art room to show off what they created. And on top of it, they take the time to tell their friends how they the created their art. And I love the conversations that I get to have with students about art, and music and creation. Teenagers are much more knowledgeable then we sometimes give them credit for, and I am inspired on a daily basis by my students. (I think the trick is to listen to them instead of telling them what they should be saying and/or thinking all the time. Then they start to tell you what they are truly about.)

And with my job, I am still given opportunity and freedom to be my own artist and be involved with art in the community. I get harassed on a regular basis for getting "summer's off". MUST BE NICE, is one of the comments I hear on a regular basis, but I know a lot of people that get 10 weeks off on holidays per year. My holidays just happen to be condensed into one well needed long duration of time. After 10 months of teaching teenagers, you don't start gaining your sanity back until about three weeks into your holiday time.

But am I passionate about being a teacher? That's a question I still mull over. I think I'm finding balance as I get older and perhaps a bit wiser? Hmmmmm. I am learning that being a teacher is my job, not my life, yet, I am fortunate to be teaching a subject that I am truly passionate about. There is a good mixture of give and take where I am able to share my artistic experiences with my students and also learn from their perspective of the artistic world. I am thankful for a lot of them, for sure. One of my favourite experiences as a teacher was when I had students create musical instruments out of found objects. One student, Adam, created a stand up bass out of a wash tub and painted folk fest pictures around the base of it, (including a painting of my son as a baby at one of many festivals). Adam had a spare during my prep time, and used to do extra work on his art in the art department during that time. One day I was listening to Norah Jones and marking, and Adam just decided to play his washtub base to the tempo of her music. He's a phenomenal musician and I just felt completely lucky to have that opportunity unfold in front of me. It was a perfect balance between being an artist, being a teacher, and being appreciative of what a student has to offer me.

It feels good to not wake up in the morning groaning, wishing that I didn't have to leave my bed. I'm glad that after 12 years, my job is not that much of a cumbersome chore. Kudos to the person that is willing to dust trophies because there is something else in that job that they find fulfilling. Kudos to the person that can enthusiastically pick up cigarette butts without feeling resentment or animosity. That's what it's about....following that passion in whatever form it may be. Ask yourself whether you've found that balance, and if you haven't, maybe it's time to weigh your options and start looking for your passionate path.

Rhonda Bobinski's Visual Arts Page on Facebook