I Love Art.  

That's always the first thing I tell my students.  "I love art" and then it's followed by, "and I hope that you will learn to love it too."

You see, the first language of humans was the creation of images on cave walls, just as the first language of a child is drawing.  Art is a universal and basic language.  The inclination to express oneself visually begins early.  It's subsequent for every person and essential for our society.  In fact, this is the job of art educators.  We are to help preserve our first language for this generation and the generations that come.

Just think about it, everything around us has been created, designed, crafted, whether it was by God's hands or by man's hands.  In fact, we are only able to create because we have been created in God's image.  Without a creator, we would have no creation.  We would have no... us.  

Just imagine a world without all the things you love; movies, games, cars, shoes, or even our clothes.  Someone had to create them.  There was an artist, a creator, a designer involved. 

Just look around the school, the internet or around the grocery store.  Art is everywhere.

The question that I want students to begin to think about is the why?  Why was something created? 

Why?  Because there is a story, a message, and a reason behind it.  And that's what we will be exploring in my class.  If we can identify the why, then students will have a clearer picture of what we are going to do.  The why gives us purpose, and it tells us what we are going to create.

In my Visual Art class, that's what we do.  We identify our why and then we become artists, and we create, keeping our purpose in mind. 

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