Whenever I visit a museum with friends, I always ask everyone,” What was your favorite artwork?. It is a way to get to know people and hear what art is meaningful to them. In many ways, art can reflect an individual.
The 8th-grade Art class at Marshal Simonds Middle School in Burlington, Massachusetts, was run by Miss McCarthy. She was no-nonsense and forthright, and wasn't shy about sending a misbehaving student to the ”office”. A terrifying directive I personally never experienced but witnessed quite regularly.
Even back then, I sensed Miss McCarthy’s stern demeanor was intentional—a role she took on to maintain control and order among us. Beneath her strictness, there was the feeling that she cared about creating a good learning environment.
8th graders cover a wide range of personalities and maturity levels, which can create a dynamic challenge for both students and teachers.
The art room was huge, with large windows along one wall flooding the space with natural light. I recall the other three walls were covered floor to ceiling with a variety of art supplies in various shapes and sizes, creating a colorful, textured enclosure that surrounded the students.
The kids sat behind a large U formed by huge, high, wide, and deep wooden tables. These had a Matte black surface and were covered with dried paint. Miss McCarrthy sat at a regular teacher's desk at the front of the room, so it was lower than all of ours.
It was the perfect room to make art.
I don't remember many of the projects we did, as I was more interested in science than art then. Inspired by M*A*S*H, I wanted to be a doctor and focused on math and science.
Miss McCarthy established fixed, assigned seating for the whole year, and the student next to me was named Roger. I was aware of him because we had been at the same school for a few years, but I don't recall ever having interacted with him. Roger was a quiet but very cool kid. I was not.
I realized right away that this was a risky situation: we would be spending 1 hour a week next to each other making art, painting, and drawing, and I knew I had to try to keep my wits about me and keep the stupid things I said to a minimum. This was not like algebra class, where you had to pay attention to the teacher or do complicated word problems that required 100% focus - this would be art-making, which would allow freedom from thinking and talking, and storytelling.
The reality was that I was a weird kid. I looked and dressed completely normal; in fact, I was often told I was cute. But the way I look at the world can be strange, and I had a habit of talking a lot to try to be funny. In making new connections, this usually started well with kids thinking I may be charming or humorous, and eventually morphed into me just being annoying. My goal was to delay this inevitable transition with Roger as long as possible.
The strategy was to keep my mouth shut and focus on my art. A solid approach I still adhere to.
One of the assignments we had was to create a still life drawing in class. We had to bring in something from home or something we had in school, set it up in front of us on the large, deep work table, and draw it with a pencil.
I took this assignment seriously and searched my home the night before for the proper object. I needed something visually interesting that also posed a technical challenge for drawing. I decided on one of my microscopes. I had two: a small, but heavy metal one that was more of a high-quality instrument, and a large plastic one that came with my TRI-LAB-PAK, a science kit from Gabriel that included tools for three fields of study: geology, microscopy, and chemistry. I would regularly collect water from the brook next to my house and look at all of the microorganisms - Paramecium, Euglena, and Volvox. Fascinating!
As I write this, the thought that I might have even the slightest possibility of having shared with Roger the wonder of unicellular organisms fills me with such complete panic.
Anyhow, I showed up at Miss. McCarthy’s art class and set my microscope on the table.
As I focused on setting up my still life, I looked around and saw what the other kids had for drawing subjects. There were some stacked books, an array of cassette tapes, and one girl had a cute stuffed teddy bear that was obviously very meaningful from when she was a small girl. I was feeling confident because my choice of a microscope was a mature selection, with a weight and physicality that felt very solid and adult. I guess I started to feel I was a bit cool.
Then I looked over at Roger’s setup, and he was doing the final adjustments, getting ready to draw. He had set up a pack of Marlboro Reds, lying on its side with the flip top open and a bunch of cigarettes spilling out. I couldn't believe it. He had also set up a 3-ring binder to block Miss McCarthy's view. What a fucking badass.
In 8th grade, smoking was a thing for only a select few. I considered it definitely a more social deviant activity than smoking pot. Pot was definitely a thing for many kids, but while I hadn't tried it yet, I knew it was done for a purpose: to get high, to make you feel good, to change the way you felt like getting drunk on alcohol.
Smoking cigarettes had no other purpose than to tell the world you didn't care about the rules or authority. We were constantly drilled about the dangers of tobacco by our health teacher (who smoked!), so there was also that. And let's face it, Marlboro Reds were the ultimate smoking statement.
This was a risk at every level. I glance over, completely shocked and in fear for Roger. Everything about this demonstrated uncertainty and exposure. What, if Miss McCarthy came over? Had he considered how to handle this potential situation? Would he casually drop the binder over the still life? - Wouldn't she see this was happening? If she saw someone tinkering with a “still” life as she approached, she would definitely know something was up and request to look under the bider. Had he not thought through the ramifications and scenarios?
What was his strategy? My mind raced - how would he possibly focus on his drawing? You need to stay focused on the drawing process; you can't worry about proportionality and line quality if you are worried about detection.
He radiated a kind of peace I couldn't understand. He was steady, unfazed, almost serene in the middle of my mental chaos—a quiet confidence I envied intensely.
We started the drawing process, I with the dull grey metal microscope and Roger with the colorful Marboro reds. I definitely remember Roger's complete sense of calm and confidence that day, a slight grin as he sketched. He had a kind of peace I couldn't understand. He was steady, unfazed, almost serene in the middle of my mental chaos.
I don't recall speaking to him at all during that drawing session. I knew we were different, but that really drove it home for me. I had looked down on kids who smoked as those who made bad decisions. I definitely felt a sense of slight superiority that I was making good decisions, while they were not. After that class, it changed. I realized there was something of value that Roger had that I did not. 100%
Looking back, I realize this was such a great artistic moment.
Art can be creating something that expresses what you desire, or a unique way of seeing the world. Interesting art often reflects a part of the creator, how they see themselves in the world, and their point of view. It can often be a place where someone can be true about their fears, their frustrations, the discrepancies between how they see themselves and how the world sees them.
One of the questions I often ask people is, “If you had a time machine, where would you go to any place or time?” I have a series of standard answers: the Castro in 1970s San Francisco and Hollywood in the late 1920s, when sound was coming to movies. But I think I have a new answer to that question. I would go back to that drawing session in Miss McCarthy's art class that day and tell Roger:
“I think you are a fearless, creative badass, and this is the purest art in the room.”
I’m sure he would think I was fucking annoying.