The following is an excerpt from my speech given at the opening of Guided by Art, a group exhibition of professional artists who were all students of Mr. Derek Tilley at CVR in the seventies and eighties. The show is currently at the Salle Culturelle Alfred-Langevin in Huntingdon. The diminishment of arts education, especially in the wake of funding cuts, was a shared concern among artists and attendees.
… All the artists have written some memories about Mr. Tilley, which are posted beside their work. I really urge everyone to read them. The stories are quite moving, and the similarity of experiences is striking. Without Mr. Tilley’s permission and encouragement to do art, and the open-door sanctuary of the art department, I think many of us would have been seriously adrift.
This leads me to the importance of art education in high schools. Art as a field of study seems to have become diminished, which makes no sense. Art is everywhere – just look. Everything you look at or use – phone, car, doorknob – required creative minds to produce. The scope of creative careers is vast. We need to realize not everyone is a visual thinker, but our up-and-coming visual thinkers need to be acknowledged, supported, and developed through arts education, especially at the high school level.
Visual learners need a place to explore their options and to springboard them forth. They need dedicated art teachers; not teachers of other subjects who have art class thrown at them as an aside – that’s not fair to them or the students. The importance of nurturing creative kids cannot be dismissed, especially as AI encroaches on everything and turns intellectual property into mindless homogenous porridge. We need boots on the ground, clay on the hands, paint on the clothes. Creativity, individual thought and concepts are the crux of humanity, and we need programs and teachers in place to give the youth space to create.
We need teachers who believe in art students, and who teach that the field of art sets them up for a myriad of paths of study. Art education doesn’t just deserve but absolutely requires proportionate funding, value, and respect.
Mr. Tilley was one such teacher for this bunch. I wish he was still here, so we could talk, and thank him for his teaching, his tolerance, and his belief in art and artists that planted the seeds of possibility, versatility, and resilience in so many his students.
Erica Taylor