One Artist's Reality

One Artists Reality

Bruce K. Chessé
8/27/09

In this blog I will try to deal with defining ones relationship to art as I experienced it within my family. To do this I should explain that I was born into a family dedicated to art and as such was surrounded by a world of over stimulation. I knew early on that I had the soul of an artist and my early years were spent trying to find a way of expressing it.

In 1935, the year I was born there was no discussion of hyperactivity the term ADHD was not coined yet and “Dyslexia.” was not a term in common usage within educational circles

“When a person is dyslexic, there is often an unexpected difference between achievement and aptitude. However, each person with dyslexia has different strengths and weaknesses, although many have unusual talents in art, athletics, architecture, graphics, drama, music, or engineering. These special talents are often in areas that require the ability to integrate sight, spatial skills, and coordination. Often, a person with dyslexia has a problem translating language into thought (such as in listening or reading), or translating thought into language (such as in writing or speaking).”

I didn’t come to realize I was dyslexic until 1967 when I married Jeanne Leicester a special ed teacher. In the fourteen years we were married I learned a great deal about myself and through my wife I found myself launched into the field of Puppetry in Education. It was a career that allowed me to dedicate myself to putting children in touch with their creative potential and began to explain the conflicts that came up within my immediate family with respect to my finding my place in art.

What defines a creative artist? My father and brother both exhibited drawing skills at an early age and in exercising those skills proved to themselves and others that they were artists. Drawing 2-dimensionally was never a skill of mine but I was possessed by an all consuming interest in art and theater and especially by that which surrounded me everyday.

Twins, Bruce & Renée

(age 4)

As I was hyperactive I got into everything to the degree that my fathers art especially his puppets were perpetually out of bounds and had “do not touch” signs connected to them. However punishments did not prevent me from getting into them.

My brother, not so restricted, however fostered my interest by putting on private puppet shows, exposing me to art, music, reading to me, and taking me to movies and exhibits. My first memory was of being taken to the Christmas parade on Hollywood Blvd. and seeing Edger Bergen, Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd high up on a float waving to us. At four years I knew who they were through he magic of radio. I also saw my first movie “Snow White” which excited and scared me at the same time. At four years of age I found an all consuming interest in “the arts”, and my father, a kid who pushed all his buttons.

Since my father and brother had the capability to illustrate and visualize their ideas on paper they were visual artists. At the same time my father and brother were actors and at six my brother appeared in the WPA Federal Theater Project’s production of “It Can’t Happen Here.” How was I to fit into the equation when I had the ideas and will but not the means to visualize my feelings or express them intellectually. When it came to art, as opposed to my twin sister, I always colored outside the lines and had no medium to pursue. The question then becomes: How does one at a very early age find a medium to express ones creative potential? If one does, it has to come from within the environment in which you a born and must be directed or encouraged in some way.

Man creates to satisfy his curiosity and to express himself. When he or she is successful one is able to validate one’s self esteem and find a springboard on which to find trust in who we are.

Bruce
(age 6)

Through my own experiences I have come to several conclusions based on the fact that we all learn in individual ways. Visual Artists are those who have the capacity to draw or paint their ideas graphically, in a 2-dimensional format and intellectualize their efforts. Instinctual Artists are those who feel their way in art experientially and not through any overt intellectual exercise but through a creative medium of expression that addresses their individual learning curve.

In the Eskimo culture one learns through observation. Interest becomes the defining factor in learning an art form. In 1976 while working in Alaska I found that children would wander into a studio where a carver was working in soapstone (a relatively easy material to work on) and walk around watching the process. Anyone could come in an out at for any length of time and for as many days as that person’s interest would hold them there. At some point you were given a knife and some material to work on. Their was no instruction you simply began to work the material until you roughed out something that appealed to you. Interestingly soapstone carving is finished by working with it under water where you could with tools or sandpaper create a smooth finished surface. Techniques for individualizing a piece were also realized by observing and then doing. Occasionally the artist would look at your piece, ask you questions and maybe make suggestions but for the most part you were left to your own devices to create you own piece of art.

What was even more interesting was the often abstract quality of the work even that done by the youngest child. This approach is not taught it too comes from observation. Observation of things in nature, plants, animals, the sky (the Aurora Borealis) and the art that surrounds them like masks which are highly symbolic and abstract as the ideas for them spring from dreams. This is even more interesting when you consider the fact that your experiential level often dictates how concrete your reality is.

Tuntatuliak, AK 1976

In developing improvisational puppet shows it is a known fact that you improvise on your experiences in life. If you have little around you in terms of reading and little that you do which influence the broadening of your horizons your puppet situations will be highly concrete representing everyday occurrences such as getting married or falling of a bike. It has no relationship to socioeconomic levels at all. However, if music was valued in your household, music figured in your play. In the Eskimo community I found the range of design of puppets made was highly abstract irrespective of the fact that the children were not abstract thinkers. The material at hand often influenced the design. I remember one child who in making a foam puppet head rejected the eye construction examples shown him and when I visited his table and looked at his puppet I found he had carefully cut out of a magazine a picture of real eyes and glued them on his puppet. In contrast to the rough design of the head the real appearance of the flat eyes pasted on the head gave an extremely hauntingly gripping abstract quality to the puppet, especially when it was animated.

1976 Tuntatuliak
(display case)

And so you have the talented and gifted whose life in art comes easily at the same time becoming an inescapable all consuming passion, the price for which is often paid by others in neglect. And then you have those who have to work at finding their muse through trial and error often having to slog through the dismissal of others relying solely on a self-determined convictions and passion. It is my particular belief that we are all creative individuals. It simply involves finding your particular mode of expression which can be self-determined by following your passion or through the encouragement of others who see in you your love of art and can suggest paths to explore. My mother was such a person