A couple months ago my Senior Art class was making mixed media murals (whoa alliteration). I divided the class into four groups and gave each group a panel of stretch canvas on which they were given one instruction: be creative. About ten minutes in to the one and a half hour class, I realized I had actually forgotten one more instruction. Their artwork had to be created in a portrait format rather than landscape because of the space they were going to be displayed in. As it happened, one out of four groups was creating their art in the landscape format and immediately they were discouraged and ready to give up.
I apologized to them for not remembering that important piece of information, but rather than allow them to start over and have think that they were the ones that made a mistake, I said to them, “Who says that bowl of fruit can’t be sideways?” They instantly looked at me like I was crazy; like I had come from some foreign place where bowls of fruit don’t sit upright. “When in life do you ever see a bowl of fruit that’s sideways?” I asked them again.
Still perplexed, I guided them to the answer. “If something falls over, is it upright or sideways?”
“Sideways!” they said, and they persisted to sketch out more fruit in their sideways bowl.
“Now, why might something fall over?”
“If someone pushes it!” And they then drew a hand to the left of the sideways fruit bowl.
“Okay, now when the fruit bowl is pushed, what might it need to be on for the fruit to fall out?” “A table!”
“And what would a fruit bowl being knocked off a table look like?”
“It would have fruit flying out!”
All of a sudden, their spirits were lifted. They had turned a ‘mistake’ into a piece of artwork with a a back story.
We are not computers. We are meant to make mistakes. And unlike computers, we can’t ctrl-z everything we didn’t mean to do, so instead we should embrace the so-called mistake and make the best of it. Take that mistake and turn it into something better than it would’ve been.
“… we can’t ctrl-z everything we didn’t mean to do, so instead we should embrace the so-called mistake…”
I never put out erasers in my classes. I always try to challenge my Junior and Senior artists, and though I wouldn’t give them any project I didn’t think they could handle, if they say to me that they’ve made a mistake and ask to use an eraser, I say no. They know me and they always know what my answer will be even though they still ask (probably hoping that I’ll cave). I’ve done this from the beginning and I do it now. I want them to be comfortable making mistakes and know that it’s not a negative reflection of who they are. And they might not make that art-to-real-life connection now, but I would only hope that them being comfortable with their artwork is the first step to them being comfortable with themselves.
And while they’re learning this valuable life lesson, I’m also exercising my creative problem-solving. When my artists tell me they’ve made a mistake, sometimes I want to reach for the eraser myself but then I’d be a hypocrite. Being comfortable making mistakes is something I struggle with, but it’s also something that I’m coming to realize makes me, me.
