Seth Godin, in his Seth's Blog, just wrote a piece about "Those People".  The blog talked about a teacher (or maybe alleged teacher) who wrote off kids whom she believed couldn't be leaders and couldn't do art.  Here's the link:  http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2013/02/those-people.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

  This blog really resonated with me for I think I'm one of those people.  Until middle school, I went to a two room country school with multiple grades per room.  We didn't have art classes, no doubt in large part because the teachers were busy trying to teach the basics to multiple grades of kids.  By the time I went to city schools, I was way, way behind from an art perspective.  My parents, being farmers, had had no art training and thus did not encourage us to create art.  Thus, I grew up believing that I sucked at art.  

  Fortunately, in my 40's I became friends with an artist who had taught art.  She believed that everyone could do art and that finding my artistic side was only a question of experimenting with various mediums until we found one that resonated with me.  My friend was in charge of the multi-generational art project for a national conference so each year she would come up with an idea for her conference art project and I would help her assemble the necessary items and create examples of what the conference attendees could do.  This annual event created the opportunity for me to experiment and to try to create without pressure.  We did things like create paper bowls and decorate them with paint, beads and feathers.  

  Eventually, I drove over to her house one day when she was creating paper collages.  She asked me to join her.  I was having a bad mid-divorce day so I refused, saying, "You know I suck at art."  She insisted.  So I sat down, pulled out a background paper and began.  Immediately I was lost in the Zone.  The Zone is that creative space where time and circumstances go away and you simply create.  When I next looked up, 3 hours had passed.    Because my friend was an artist, she had mats and frames on hand so we matted and framed this piece.  By the end of the afternoon, I had a lovely piece of art that was done, finished and ready to be hung.

  I was hooked.  

  I wasn't one of "those people" any more.   My friend had persisted until she had found my creative spark via a medium I would never have thought of on my own.  

  Since that day, I realized that so often we drum the creative spirit out of children and out of adults.  When folks come into my booth at art fairs and tell me that they are not creative, I always disagree.  I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they are creative.  They simply have not found their medium nor have they been encourage to try different mediums until one resonates with them.

  The bottom line is that we are all artistic.  We are all creative.  None of us are "those people."  We need teachers, mentors and friends who care enough about us to not categorize us, to not put us in the "those people" category.   I'm with Seth Godin in his sadness and disappointment with this (alleged) teacher.  

  Don't let anyone put you in the "those people" box.