salute your sources.

MAR 21 2025

Mar 21, 2025

This week in class, the focus came from the Learning by Heart chapter theme of Sources.

Corita reminded me of a few lessons this week when she wrote,

“Enthusiasms of the teacher flow into the class – a sharing takes place and rich ideas are sparked. We are each other’s sources” (2008, p. 43).

Art teachers are so fortunate here. Our enthusiasms include visual art, materials, pop culture, research - all things that make me stoked. This week my students and I ordered (2) Dominos pizzas and then gave it a “creativity score” (its art class, everything's made up). It received an average of 6.125/10 scale. Top creative connections, it has had some creative marketing campaigns, like actually filling pot holes in cities to also being the creator of the modern pizza-box. Check out this story, Scott's Pizza Chronicles: A Brief History of the Pizza Box for more. However, it was accessed lower because it’s just a basic pizza.

It’s fun being an art teacher. This lunch evaluation was after a beautiful morning spent at my colleague Raven in the Glade’s presentation and gallery show. My students were in awe with the connections they each made with the work in documenting and creating work to connect with transformation in creative self and identity. When enthusiasms happen, rich ideas are sparked.

It’s hard for me to really pick what my favorite image (created or documented by the artist) shared in the presentation. However, I know for fact that if I were to come across the many Earthworks pieces in nature I would be very delighted. Documentation of the various solstices with sunlight and shadows was also a big highlight for me creatively.

Snapshot of classroom visual journals,

“Anything we do with care, curiosity, and feeling will be good. Time spent working with words is never wasted” (2008, p. 62)

In a 1988 edited collection of women’s chapters titled the Sacred Dimensions of Women’s Experience, Corita shares a short but powerful message in the Section 1 / Women’s Creativity. I read it often as a guide through tumultuous waters, as her words still ring very true in addressing the controversies our society is facing in education, human rights, and environmental protections. Corita’s work throughout the ‘60s, became increasingly political and a commitment to social justice. She was not immune to the adversity of her time, but in this chapter she tells us that “from my long training I have been taught not to talk about my adversity” (1988, p. 37).

She continues, “I think we have to have the awareness we lose connection with the whole, with the cosmos. Art is one of the means amid adversity of reestablishing the connection” (1988, p. 37). Time spent mastering a craft, a part of the learning process, or (insert your creative connection) is not wasted, because it’s the light we each bring to our environments.

Connecting to creative sources myself, I had some more fun imagining & drawing a scene I thought of with my creative pal

Anna Brones

. Us, having the most fun having fika with our top source material artists, Tove Jansson and Corita Kent. Loved imaging this scene after reading Anna’s Substack titled Tove Jansson's Paradise. Both creatives had lessons to reverberate lifelong lessons of creative acts and play.

Corita is an enormous example of a creativity primary “source”. She would most likely quickly remind you that your friends and daily creative life are also your sources. Her work with words still connects today and is needed more now than ever. Which is why I really enjoyed the Corita Art Center re-opening.

coritaartcenter

A post shared by @coritaartcenter

In a quick list, here are the creative connections I think will add a little more hope and fun to our world. If you’re an art student or just a human needing a little extra art teacher energy these days, I hope they get you stoked for Friday.