ARTIST AND TEACHER Creating Works of Art and Encouraging Children to Do So
	MARCH 2005

by Scott Cleek
Photos by Russell Byrne

I’ve been interested in art since I was child. Like many other young males, I collected comic books. Unlike many of my contemporaries, however, I was collecting these things because of my fascination with the comic book art form itself. My first real foray into the world of art took place when I began producing comic books of my own design and creation.

I eventually progressed from comic book art to works of fantasy. I was influenced by the noted fantasy artist, Frank Frazetta and created a set of fantasy pieces that featured heroic characters, and included dragons and other mythical creatures.

In college I was especially influenced by Roy Lichtenstein and Peter Max, who did the artwork for the Yellow Submarine movie.

I majored in graphic design in college and then spent some time working for an ad agency and managing a fine art gallery in San Diego.

Back to School — on Both Sides of the Lectern
I finally threw over agencies and galleries and moved into teaching. I went back to school, got my teaching credentials from San Diego State University.

I made the decision to get into teaching because of experiences I had giving art lessons in public schools. I enjoyed the encounters with students and caught a vision of sharing my passion with young people. I felt I could create a lasting, positive effect in the world though the impact that I might have upon the minds, hearts, and imaginations of the students who would sit under my instruction.

I grew up in Incline Village in Lake Tahoe and attended a school that had no art program. I wanted to be part of fixing that problem for other students. Kids need an outlet, whether band, choir, drama, or art to provide outlet for their creative energies.

Also, it always seemed wonderful to me to see the way budding artists often respond to artistic challenges. I’m astonished every day by the creativity, risk-taking, and imagination of my young students. They are always thinking “outside the box” because they don’t know where the box is.

Following graduation I got a job teaching at Brentwood’s Ron Nunn School. I was not an art teacher, but incorporated art in teaching my forth graders. I covered the masters and conducted projects that incorporated art in a cross-curricular fashion by working drawing and painting assignments into the standard curriculum subjects, including reading, literature, social studies, etc.

Finally, the opportunity opened up of becoming an art instructor at O’Hara Park Middle School. Accepting the change required me to make a difficult decision because I had really enjoyed my experience at Ron Nunn. The school had provided a great environment. I finally made the change because I really wanted to teach art.

Oakley is committed to arts and drama far beyond most school systems in this day of booming enrollments and declining revenues. I am now a full-time art teacher with an appropriate facility in which to conduct my classes.

It is to the credit of the school board and parents organizations that when the district built the new school, they included an art room, which enables me to provide learning experiences far superior to other schools that, if they provide art at all, end up doing so in a corner of the lunchroom or in a converted classroom.

I began teaching at O’Hara Park and when the new Delta Vista Middle School opened I started to rotate my time between the two schools. Oakley school calendars are organized by trimester so my art program alternated with the drama, technology, and computer programs.

A Camp for Passionate Young Artists
Every summer for the past two years my wife, Julie, and I have conducted a summer art camp working with clay, black glue, watercolors, and oil pastels. We started last year in our living room. This past summer we rented a room in the new Lutheran Church at Sand Creek and Fairview.

We offered art learning three weeks, each week including three one-hour classes a day. As students signed up we tried to group them by age level.

Some of the kids in our summer program repeated every class every day, for the entire three weeks.

The classes are small, from 8-10 students. The art camp provides me with a venue permitting me to work with materials too expensive for schools. Even better, the camp experience provides the challenges and rewards of working in an intensive way with kids who are passionate about art.

We also conducted a weekend camp. Both camps provided a great experience for all of us. Between Julie, who has a wonderfully artistic eye, and me the kids learned a lot about doing art.

Public school art learning provides a good experience for all the children, even those who don’t hold on to art as a central-life passion. But during those camp experiences, when that passion is present, doing art together at times becomes indescribably wonderful.

Teaching by Example
When I’m working on a project myself for a client, I conduct my own show-and-tell things for my students, demonstrating to them how art projects work in the real world all the way from concept to delivery.

I carried out some of my biggest art projects in the area schools themselves. I painted my first large mural at the Ron Nunn cafeteria. Ron Nunn School calls itself The Eagles so they wanted to use that theme in the multi-purpose room. After finishing the first panel, however, we continued extending the mural until it eventually encircled the entire room.

The mural depicts the content of science and history classes from kindergarten through fourth grade, working its way from dinosaurs, through sea life, to the solar system on one side. And covering California History through Brentwood History, on the other. The mural was a relatively huge project, requiring more than a summer of full-time work.

I did a mural for the Edna Hill School “Bobcats” showing a bobcat and for the Vintage Parkway “Dolphins” did a large sea life mural. I did the Freedom High School Falcons mural and for the Oakley Elementary Tigers, I created murals in the office area, as well as the basketball court. I’ve done others murals for businesses, including the Hair Raisers Salon, as well as murals in private homes.

I do other types of commercial jobs on the side, such things as creating the wine label for our local Enos Winery. I’m having fun doing what I’m doing. I love the act of creation regardless of the medium I’m using, whether it’s a custom picture on Zippo lighter, a snowboard, or a motorcycle helmet.

I’m also interested in pursuing my passion for fine arts paintings. My goal is to continue painting and, ideally, selling my pieces through galleries. I’m currently showing in the Blackhawk Gallery.

Finding the Good Life through Creating and Teaching
Being creative all the time keeps me young. I always try to have a few projects going at one time. I’ve learned to let projects “breathe” from time to time. You can get a different perspective on a piece when you leave it alone for a while. So I might move from brushing oil onto a painting, to airbrushing a helmet, to creating a label. Then I go back to the oil painting, and so forth. Working in this fashion serves to interject variety into the routine of creation.

I’m always learning. Any curriculum I develop for my school classes always end up teaching me more than it ever teaches the students. Preparing lessons always helps me to have greater appreciation of the style or the artist that I’m teaching about.

A lesson on Wassily Kandinsky, the father of abstract art, or the pictures of Georgia O’Keeffe, increases my own understanding of and appreciation for these masters.

My goal at the Junior High level is to expose kids to various movements. During the course of a trimester we tend to cover the works of a number of different masters, including people like Van Gough and Picasso, plus exploring various media and materials.

I’ve got a good life. What could be greater than to be working all the time in creating things of beauty for people, perhaps even future generations, to enjoy? Well, there’s one thing better, at least, and that is creating the possibility in the lives of children that they might themselves participate in that process of creation.

Teaching young lives to create really is the very best thing a person could do with his life, I think. Seeing the gleam of passion in the eyes of young artists and then watching the gleam burst into delight as they revel in some beautiful thing they have created…. That’s the best thing of all!

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