Fall is fall...preoccupation is natural...go with the flow

So, it seems that the Fall class is a no-go at the LaGrange Art League - simple lack of interest, reflected in a total lack of registration. Fall is always a difficult time to get students for a formal class, especially if they are either A, returning to school, or B, adult students with children of their own. Either way the deck is stacked against something that is specifically another course of study, rather than being craftsy and/or directly project-oriented, where the winter holidays do give some motivation for doing creative things. Learning/working on skills themselves, though...logically, in this clime and culture, there's less of a drive there than at other times of the year.

I'd say that Spring and Summer are the most attractive times so far as scheduling by quarters, as the seasonal instinct is more towards opening up and experimentation and testing one's limits. Fall is a cocooning and tight-focusing time, and it really takes seeing art as a personal discipline for one to include it into one's schedule as days grow shorter and time more practicality/survival-oriented.

At least that's my somewhat-existential read of it. So far as the simple fact of school goes, anyone connected to formal schooling, whether teacher, parent or student, is going to be preoccupied with starting the school year off, and will not tend to be open to new projects and pursuits. I think that as a matter of efficiency, I should simply not teach a formal course through the LGAL or any other organization in the fall, and have it be strictly devoted to single-shot workshops, flexible private/small-group lessons, and catching up on my own work for display and sales. That way I don't have have to deal with either an outside school's overhead or the minimum class registration levels that it requires, at a time when a process-focused but non-credit art course like mine is on the lowest-possible end of seasonal demand.

That is my thought as of tonight, and I think that it makes more sense than repeatedly scrambling for more students at the last minute - better to keep myself advertised all year long and build greater demand for organized classes, instead of dissipating it every quarter of the year.


Thoughts? Requests?

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Same old, same old? [Updating]

I don't know why it slips my mind to update my promos here before each quarter...oh right, I do - since the blog has no regular followers, there's really not any positive pressure being exerted on me. Though, the more places I link to it professionally as my "art" website/blog, the more I logically ought to be keeping up on it.

But really, the only thing that has necessarily changed in description for this upcoming Fall session (starting Tuesday evening, Sept. 14) is the class dates. Seeing as it isn't summer, we're back to a straight eight-week course rather than a split 4+4, which is just fine with me. I have yet to figure out how to viably condense an effective drawing course, 'unlearning' and learning both, into a four-week span, as some students missed the point that it was a through-composed course and not a 'taster' class.

The main point of clarity there is that I can't give a full Art History lecture on canon and anatomy and proportions the second week if that's going to also be the halfway-mark of the course. So, ditch the scheduled lecturing, give the lecture notes as a handout - and/or have available as online resource, as in posted here - and perhaps we won't have issues of going off on tangents then, especially when discussing the humanistic innovations of Hellenistic art and the Amarna Revolution, which always seem to lead into a general discussion of history, symbolism, cultural anthropology and religious controversies. Not that I shy away from controversy, of course...but the point of a drawing class is to draw, and I do want to make sure that in-class time is spent efficiently on that, especially since adult students who are working and/or have children of their own cannot be expected to do "homework" on any regular basis, making the studio of the class itself an island of time/space to actually work within.

For the fall, though, I can be indulgent there. And if I wind up shy of the minimum number of students for Fall quarter, then we'll see how it works out to have classes (or private lessons) at the house, as well as the usual Halloween-themed workshops. It can be done, after all, and I have the wherewithal to do it.

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For reference if seen in a timely manner, here's the link to the LaGrange Art League's current class brochure:
http://www.lagrangeartleague.org/Classes.html - mine is #8 this time around.

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