It's About Time
by
Theresia Rosa Kleeman
I turned the hourglass over and history repeated itself. As I heard her words coming out of my mouth, my heart sank with guilt for the public humiliation I caused her to feel years ago at that family gathering. Even though I didn’t do it on purpose, this is the way it went after a glass, or two, of white wine and the sharp taste of confidence boosted by a recent professional development seminar.
Led by the global authority on Teaching for Artistic Behavior, a choice-based paradigm where students learn what artists do, the seminar had developed me professionally in the best of ways. The convention ballroom was fully packed with round tables of ten scattered across the retro futurist carpet pattern.
Each white tablecloth with a black square topper had a few too many glasses. I lost count as we knocked them over every other time we reached across the table to pass the talking stick. Working in our groups of ten, we were instructed, or more eloquently stated, we were invited to discuss the topic projected on the screen: What invention has had the greatest impact on the world as we know it today?
The icebreaker was brilliant and got us all thinking like Leonardo Da Vinci, Elon Musk, or at least as the master of our own universe. So, of course, I planned to dominate the family dinner by lofting the same question at the perfect moment with all eyes on me. “I wonder,” I said to focus their attention before posing the magic question, “What invention do you think has had the greatest impact on society?”
She, and I were the only women in the circle populated with familial lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists, and a few arty types. “Refrigeration,” “Antibiotics,” “Velcro,” all perfectly acceptable and engaging responses which served my strategic command. Then, she said, “Time.”
“Oh, that doesn’t count,” I said while gesturing others to support my point of view. And then she calmly said it again, “Time is a human construct which impacts every breath of our lives.” Since I wanted to talk about digital media and the democratization of information through the Internet, I buried her insight by asking my cousin if his seventeenth-floor office used Mac or PC computers.
We create timed art works in art class and I keep an hourglass on my desk that has about ten minutes of black sand in it. Students can do a lot of artistic behaviors in ten minutes. We start with observing either an object, a situation, or an emotion we might be feeling. Then, class progresses to students making art work of their choice which often includes drawing, painting, Adobe, Procreate, photography or even performance.
Whatever media they need, they know where to find it in the studio at the various material stations set up around the room. The tools are there, too. For obvious reasons, the computers are at the opposite end of the studio from the paint and clay. After I do a demonstration of some useful technique or new skill, the students are free to discuss among themselves, gather their wits and supplies about them, and get to work. It never ceases to amaze me what wonders students can create in ten minutes.
“Time,” I announce as the last grain of sand falls through the transit to rest on top of the dune at the bottom of the hourglass. The students grumble some indiscernible syllables as they put down their brush, pen, Xacto or stylus and hold up their hands to signal that they have stopped working.
Sand in the hourglass is never balanced equally between the sides; the sand is in constant flux, in motion until all of it moves from the top to the bottom where it comes to rest. In the art studio, students feel safe and free to explore because their autonomy is supported by a classroom community to which they belong and participate as a vital contributor. There is room to move and make connections between ideas.
The hands connect to the heart and the brain creating a flow of energy that seems to tap into the universe. When challenge is balanced with ability, creative activity is released from any sense of time into what Csikszentmihalyi calls a flow state. I think of it like yoga, specifically anusara, a Sanskrit word which means basically to step into that which is already flowing.
“That went by too fast, it was not ten minutes. I just got started,” echoes between students across the art studio. “I just figured out how to do what I wanted to do and time is up?!” more than one student proclaims. “Do you want more time?” I ask and the students answer unanimously in the affirmative before I can even get all the words out. Again, I turn the hourglass over.
Another ten minutes after the first ten minutes and so on describes chronos or chronological time. A linear record of events measured in even increments. The ticktock of the clock and around we go, get up at 6, be at school by 8, have lunch at noon, et cetera, ad infinitum. Day into night, winter into spring, summer, and fall. Then, history repeats. Time after time.
A small group opted to observe the lemons I brought to class from the bursting tree in my yard. Today we all feel lazy because daylight saving time forced our sleep last night before waking us up way too early. On top of that, it is raining and we expect 1 to 3 inches this week. The point is that we will need to remain indoors and a watercolor still life of lemons is a cheerful activity. Each student gets one lemon cut in half to position on a white ground. The gutsy artists squeeze some seeds and juice onto the paper to mix in with the paint to add a semblance of verisimilitude to their work.
Have you heard the one where the past, the present, and the future meet in a bar? It was tense. Conventional wisdom suggests that timing is essential to the effective delivery of a joke. Adding lemon juice to a painting of lemons provides a similar cosmic alignment of elements to produce the effect of the organized whole work of art.
You know the feeling when you are listening to music and a wave of nostalgia overtakes you? Suddenly you are back in time to when you heard the music for the first time even though you are dancing in the present, physical moment. The past leaks into the present to provide depth and meaning all the time. So how can time truly be linear, moving in one direction?
Staring into the lemon-yellow paint pan swirling the brush with water, I got lost in thought. My mind bounced between daffodils in the backyard of my mid-western childhood home and daffodils surrounding Hever Castle during spring break when traveling around England with a group of high school students; from Anne Boleyn’s childhood home to my own and back before imagining this beautiful watercolor still life on display in a retrospective of my life’s work at the Norton Museum in Pasadena.
My imaginative creative spirit meanders from my past to the present to centuries from the past to my spring break last year, all the way into the future, long after I am gone! Past, present, and future coexisting in one moment of thought: am I still describing linear time? It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, all at the same time. It feels more like simultaneity.
Just to amuse myself, I love thinking about the fact that time passes faster for your face than for your feet when you are standing because time goes slower the closer you are to the center of the earth. Imagine if you could actually have a sense of that experience in real time. I can’t tell if I can feel the temporal disparity between my face and my feet.
“Just relax and don’t cling too tightly to your judgments as you paint. The imperfections in the artist’s mark-making provide character that makes the artwork interesting to the viewer,” I say to console a student as she complains that the eraser doesn’t work on watercolor paint. “Creating and editing are totally separate brain functions. Do not try to do them at the same time,” I say but fail to convince her.
The big bang is known as the beginning of the universe, the source of life as we know it. Cosmologists describe the origin and evolution of the universe as flowing from a moment when elements fell within margins advantageous to the formation of life. Everything was just right, a veritable Goldilocks moment where everything lined up with perfect timing.
“You spilled black India ink on my watercolor still life,” I heard a student cry out from the other side of the room. If the students did their homework, then all will be okay because the YouTube videos they were to view included Bob Ross describing mistakes as happy accidents followed by a 10-hour re-mix of happy little clouds.
“The ink black background will produce a dynamic horizon line and negative space with depth in contrast to the white foreground. The rich texture of the ink will exquisitely define the edge of the lemon skin as the vibrant yellow watercolor pigment swoops into a curve at the edge of the frame,” I said before turning around to see everyone squirting drops and splats of ink onto the watercolor paper. By this time, the whole class was painting lemons.
A scientist who made an accidental discovery which produced a life-saving cure, noted that serendipity is only available to the prepared mind. It seems like he is the same guy who claimed wisdom to be the ability to see retrospectively, prospectively. When I explain this to students, it is usually after a student inquiry about the validity of learning the constraints of technique when art is about freedom of expression. An inquiry delivered in the form of push back requires a good sense of timing to sensibly unpack and address.
“The black and white stripes in the background definitely make it your own,” I commented to one student as we were hanging the watercolors up on the board for critique. Although everyone in the room painted the same thing at the same time with the same materials, each painting was unique much like each lemon is its own version of the lemon ideal. The color, transparent yellow on white paper, facilitated glorious realism in the triangular wedges of citrus flesh separated by membranes within the skin.
This idea of flow, Goldilocks moments, and serendipity are not based in chronological time. An opportune or proper time for action is the stuff of kairos, the other modality of time that humans experience which is distinct from the sequential time of chronos. To everything, there is a season.
As the students utilized the elements of art and principles of design to discuss and provide constructive feedback regarding their art works, I felt a sense of satisfaction hearing my own words and phrases repeated in their voices.
“I ran out of time,” one student said in response to feedback that her work was minimal and austere. It was a compliment. Another student said “Actually, I really like that about your piece, it stands out and it makes me feel peaceful when I look at it. It’s good!” I say, “I agree with your statement, well said. You had all the time you needed and you clearly used your time well.”
In that instant, before I knew what I was thinking those words jumped out, “Time is a human construct which impacts every breath of our lives.” I felt my face turn red as the memory of that moment, when I was so rude and dismissive to my cousin at our family event years ago, welled up inside me. With the calm that comes from reflection, I added, “Time is the invention that has had the greatest impact on humanity. Be easy with yourself and step into the flow.”
Sometimes timing is a challenge when communicating with adolescents because we live on distinct bandwidths, occupy dissimilar frequencies, move at divergent tempos, and were born into this world at different points in time. However, we do intersect and overlap and intermingle quite nicely as we walk the path together.
“Now, are we ready to begin?" I ask the class as the students return to their chosen places with selected tools and materials. The students remain silent but answer with a nod as their hand hovers above a blank canvas. Then, I turn the hourglass over, again.
