A Student

Last afternoon, into the evening, was my drawing studies class for sophomores. I must tell you about one student in the class. I will change his name but you must trust that his real name is close to being this strange and telling: Bud Wise, I am deciding to call him. He is tall, skinny, weedy, with two tufts of mange on his chin. He seems like he sells hay or healing balms by the side of a dirt road in a fairy tale. He is a wonderful quiet kid and I feel lucky to know him. Here are some reasons why:

1. In an initial questionnaire I handed out last week, one of the questions was, What interests you most about drawing? His answer:

nature, automatic writing, boats, trains, shamanism, illusions.

2. Another question: Describe the best drawing you ever made (best according to you). He wrote a long treatise about his grandfather who was an acrobat and an airplane pilot, that he used to like to sit in his office and look at his stuff. That his grandmother collected porcelain owls and images of owls from all over the world and he is planning to draw them all. He never described a drawing.

3. He completes the first assignment incorrectly but makes beautiful drawing of himself with eyes extremely to each side, like a fish, with his hands touching, palmward, in front of him, legs crossed, like a Buddha pose, but not. He went on to explain that the drawing represented total happiness and he chose to use branches and snakes as substitute genitals, they were emanating from his lap.

More anecdotes to come. Bud Wise, I may pay you to be a student in every class I ever teach. I predict he will do everything incorrectly but better than anything I could have hoped for.