How Art Teaches Us How to Change

I always get frustrated at the fact that one of the first things that gets cut when schools are trying to save money is the arts. I majored in theater and know the love of being on stage. I’m a writer of both poetry and fiction. I’m an artist. For me the arts are not a luxury they are a way of life. The arts in its many forms can not only entertain but it can teach. It can make you think.

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is widely considered to be a major influence in starting the American Civil War. John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath created major controversy in its depiction of migrant farm workers. George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess for all its faults did provide for African Americans the showcase to prove they could be a force to be reckoned with in the entertainment business. A Raisin in the Sun was the first play written by an African American woman to be performed on Broadway. Andrew Wyeth and Norman Rockwell showed that art and the common man belonged together. Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie brought an awareness of the working man’s condition to the world of song.

The arts like anything else can be turned and used for propaganda. The arts can also be a powerful tool to teach and bring to the forefront the issues and problems of real people. By its very nature art changes and evolves. A few years ago the idea of doing art on computers was laughed at. With the arthritis in my hands it is the only way I can do artwork these days.

It is in this ability to change and adapt that art has the most valuable lesson for today’s world. We must change and try new ideas if we are to conquer the problems facing us today. The ideas of the past are not working. I work in a small town hospital. I know from first hand experience that there is a health care crisis. I see people struggling to find jobs and to pay their bills. FDR realized with his New Deal that it is the common man who suffers most in economic down turns. We must change and we must push our representatives to change. The policies of the previous eight years have been proven not to work. It is time for the common man to be represented and given the chance to live the American Dream.

As readers of this diary know I was the caregiver for my mother for six years. We lost Mom in May. We had lost my Dad in May of 1999. Both of my parents loved my artwork and I frequently did pictures specifically for my Mom in the last couple of years. My Dad was a major reason that I pursued the art as he was one of my biggest cheerleaders. The last picture I did before my Dad died was one I called Gathering Moonlight. The picture illustrates a scene in one of my short stories. My Dad loved the picture. I have been reworking old pictures as the models and technology has advanced with computer art and I want the pictures to reflect those changes and the new techniques I have learned. I always hesitated to redo Gathering Moonlight because of the emotional connection it had for me as the last picture Dad saw before he died. Last night though I asked myself the question what would you do if Dad were still alive? The answer was that I would redo the picture and show it to him. So for Dad and Mom here is the new version of Gathering Moonlight. You have to be able to change. The past formed our present and what we do in the present will form our future. If we don’t want to repeat the errors of the past we must change now or there will be no future. This is the lesson we can learn from the arts.