Art School
Many artists begin to work in their childhood, making art. From my earliest memories, I recall pestering and pestering my dad for an oil painting set. Why, I have no idea. Anyway, eventually he caved in and, bless his heart, one day he presented me with a wooden, dark brown (mahogany?) paint box full of oil paint tubes, a palette, painting medium and brushes, and those small metal medium cups that clip onto the palette. I was in seventh heaven having died and gone to heaven that very moment. Prior to that all I had was a dinky water color set which never allowed me, so it seemed, to make a strong enough statement. I was all of seven years old!
Later I started going to art school on Saturdays. Roger Wolfe, a teenager who lived down the street, took me to the corner and the both of us paid the $1 fee for the school. During the winter I remember that the two of us would wait for the bus inside of the salt box on the corner. It had a lid so we could stay warm inside and peek out to see if the bus was coming.
The school was in Buffalo on Utica Ave (later I found out it was called the Buffalo Art Institute and then the Albright Art school). This was a Saturday art school for kids. During the week the school was a professional art school for adults and we could see their paintings and sculptures when we entered the lobby. At that time they were into photo realistic scenes of the industrial landscape.
We learned linoleum tile carving and printing, drawing with charcoal and fixing it with fixative spray, oil painting on canvas, and clay sculpture, the teacher, a Ms. Beagleman, was our school district art teacher in Kenmore. She had picked me out from all of the kids to attend this school. My wonderful mother (she was a gem of a mother when she wasn’t ill) had somehow worked with Ms. Beagleman and Roger Wolfe, coordinating things so I could attend. I think she was a repressed artist herself (my mom), and although she never did any art work herself, her handwriting was beautiful and she sometimes spoke of her interest in art while in high school (she only went up to the eighth grade).
One strange thing is that none of the art I produced ever made it back home. I was too young to realize I needed to end up with some of my own production. Apparently the art teacher kept all of it for her own use. I don’t remember my mom asking for or ever getting a folio of the work I produced. There were never any exhibits or displays of our work. It was all process. Beagelman was an impressionist and she took pains to teach us pointillism and impressionist brushwork.
One of the greatest things, weather permitting, was the plein air painting outings where we went into vacant lots or even down to the waterfront to paint. I remember painting in Delaware Park near the Zoo. One day down by the harbor we painted the boats. I remember being let onto a tug boat and the captain rubbing my face with a wash cloth so hard it almost rubbed my skin off, or so it seemed. Somehow he didn’t think I washed my face good enough at home or maybe I had gotten some paint on my face.
