Rebecca did not have a single artistic bone in her body. She couldn’t even draw a straight line with a ruler. That’s why, when she discovered the only class she could fit into her tight schedule was a painting class, she broke into a cold sweat. She needed to maintain a 3.75 GPA to keep up her scholarship, and she couldn’t afford to ruin it by getting a D in an art class. She bit her lower lip as she continuously reloaded the registration page, chanting “Please, please, please,” praying some other class would open, but it never did. She pressed the register now button with a trembling finger, the dread welling up in her like a cyclone.
On her first day of class, Rebecca trudged into the art room with leaden feet and took a seat in the back. As the other students began setting up their easels, Rebecca’s heart dropped. It was just as she had feared. From the buzz of conversation, it was clear these were experienced art students who had taken many classes together. Tears stung Rebecca’s eyes as she set up her meager supplies, watching her classmates unpack fancy paint brushes, little metal thingys and other weird doodads. She sat by her easel, in a trance, having visions of losing her scholarship and having to drop out of school.
Just as her catastrophic thoughts were reaching their peak, Professor Morgan strolled into the room jolting Rebecca out of her stupor. The professor was wearing a paint-stained smock and a colorful bandana over her long gray braid and Rebecca thought she looked like the quintessential artist.
After attendance was taken, and expectations were discussed, the professor pointed to a bowl of fruit on her desk and said, “Don’t just paint it, make it your own. Surprise me.”
Rebecca took a deep breath and told herself, “I can do this. Anybody can paint fruit.” She squeezed her paints onto the palette and proceeded to create a work of art, which If she were to name it, would call it something like “Toddler’s First Painting.” As the students concentrated on their work, Professor Morgan walked around the classroom nodding her head and saying things like, “beautiful, how creative, wonderful,” and then she looked at Rebecca’s canvas and whispered, “See me after class.”
After all the students had filed out, Rebecca shuffled slowly towards the front of the room so engrossed in worry she tripped over the garbage bin and sent trash flying everywhere. She burst into tears as she dropped to her knees to clean up the mess. When she was finished picking up the garbage, Professor Morgan handed her a tissue and said, “Rebecca, what are you doing in my class?”
Rebecca stared at the floor. “I work twenty hours a week to pay for my room and board, and I have to go home every weekend to take care of my ten-year-old sister.” She sniffled, “This was the only class I could fit into my schedule. Please let me stay, Professor Morgan, I need the credits to graduate on time. I’ll clean up the supplies, get you coffee every morning, I’ll even mop the floors. I’ll do anything.”
Professor Morgan sat down and took a couple of minutes to think about the situation. She began drumming her fingers on her desk as Rebecca picked at her cuticles.
“Okay Rebecca,” the professor said, “this is what we’re going to do. Every week I’ll give you the name of an artist and you’ll write a two-page report and it better be good. I’ll exempt you from the normal class assignments, but you will be responsible for exactly the same number of projects as the other students. Just because you don’t have the same artistic talent as some of your peers doesn’t mean you don’t possess creativity. Use it because I’m not going to go easy on you.”
Rebecca jumped up and wiped her tears, “Thank you, Professor Morgan. I won’t disappoint you.” She walked out of the room mumbling, “Oh God, what did I just do?”
Rebecca spent the next week obsessively reading about artists, looking at photos of art and resigning herself to the fact that she might have to drop out. Then, as she was leafing through the pages of a book of modern art, she spotted a photo of a painting hanging on the walls of a famous museum. It was a canvas simply with the word “OOF painted on it. “Wait a minute,” she thought scratching her head, “is that really art?” Her heart sped up as she jumped in the air and shouted, “I can do that.”
The next class, Rebecca held her breath as she presented her first art project to her professor. It was a canvas completely covered in black paint with the word “Zoom,” superimposed on it in bright white lettering. Professor Morgan furrowed her brows and Rebecca explained, “I call it ’A Beacon of Hope’. During the pandemic, we were all stuck home and it was like the world had become black and hopeless. Then Zoom emerged like a beacon of light. It helped people work together, go to school together and interact with each other. People felt less lonely.”
Professor Morgan picked up her grade book, rubbed her chin for a moment and smiled, “Okay, I’ll accept it.” Rebecca’s heart soared as she skipped out of the classroom that day.
Over the next few months, Rebecca devoted herself to her craft and slowly discovered she had found a new passion. Every Saturday she brought her little sister with her to The Museum of Modern Art and afterwards the two girls would go out for pizza and laugh at the silly things they had seen. What had started out as resentment for having to watch her little sister, turned into a precious bond.
When midterms rolled around, Rebecca wrote a paper called, “Is it Art, or are we Just Being Scammed?” The idea took root when she discovered one of the exhibits in the The Tate Modern, a museum in London, was a urinal. It was the kind of ordinary porcelain urinal you could find in any men’s bathroom, yet the fact that the artist Marcel Duchamp declared it to be art, made it art. She was flabbergasted when she learned how much this toilet supply was worth and couldn’t stop thinking a out it.
As Rebecca’s confidence grew, she began taking genuine pleasure in her creations and the more she learned, the more sophisticated they became. One of her favorite projects was one she called, “Reflections of Your Inner Child.” Inspired by an exhibit she had seen in the Museum of Modern Art, Rebecca bought an antique looking mirror in Bargainmart, broke the glass into pieces, and reassembled them like a puzzle, gluing them back onto the frame with a photo of her little sister underneath. She left a gap in the middle where her sister’s reflection would blend with the face peering in. Rebecca laughed as she watched her professor startle at her dual reflection, and then she startled when her professor hung it on the wall.
For her final assignment, Rebecca wanted to do something meaningful. Though she still couldn’t draw a straight line, she had learned to take a decent photo and spent a week photographing people on subways, buses, and coffee shops, sitting next to each other and scrolling on their phones. They appeared to be in a hypnotic trance, oblivious to the people around them, existing in their own private world. She arranged the photos in a collage and wrote the word “Addiction,” over and over again surrounding the canvas like a picture frame. When she finished, she stood back to examine her work and her heart almost burst with pride. It looked like art.
When Professor Morgan displayed her final project in the school’s art fair. Rebecca hid in a corner and watched people critique her work. Whether they liked it or not didn’t matter, the thing she cared about was that was sparking conversations. Rebecca looked around the art fair and took a deep breath, grinning with satisfaction.
Late in the day, when the crowd started thinning, Rebecca walked over to Professor Morgan and said, “Thank you, Professor, for changing my life. It had always been my plan to become a therapist, but now I’m thinking of becoming an art therapist.”
“Rebecca,” her professor said, “that’s amazing.” She put her arm around her shoulder, “You know, I had my concerns about you in the beginning. I didn’t think you’d last more than two weeks but look at you now.” She gave Rebecca’s shoulder a squeeze, “You are, without a doubt, my most surprising student.” She winked, “A+.”
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