When it comes to education, all you hear about these days are budget cuts, budget cuts, and more budget cuts. As our schools put funds ahead of minds, it’s important not to ignore the arts, which deserve our support now more than ever. If for no other reason than the penises the neighbor kid drew on my Mazda are cloying, dare I say trite.
Art impacts our lives in ways one might not realize. From the musical jingle of your favorite cat litter commercial to the array of diverse, yet artistically toothless, penises that 16-year-old Dustin Hoddelby etched into my 2015 Mazda Accord with his Rick & Morty keychain. That last one has impacted my life the most.
More arts funding means more music, more film, more dance, and hopefully more dicks that don’t look like Dr. Seuss mushrooms. But like, on Seuss’s first try. It’s not that the allegory in this work was lost on me, by the way. It’s that the brushwork never let it speak in the first place. A pity. Your support for arts in the schools can help more than just Dustin’s chiaroscuro, or in this case, his chodearoscuro.
I am of the belief that to limit art is to limit the future itself. But only exposing students to the hard and fast rules of science and arithmetic, we’re murdering the discovery of who they might become if given the proper tools. A Grammy-award-winning songwriter. A renowned painter. The founder of a life-changing non-profit art studio. Or, in Dustin Hoddelby’s case, hopefully someone who can draw a pee-pee vein in plein air with at least a touch of respect for sfumato.
If you can find it in your heart to encourage our schools to keep their art curriculum, please do. And if you happen to see Dustin lurking by my Mazda at any point, please let him know that he can achieve a richer texture if he stopped underpainting, experimented with glazing, and traded his keychain for a steak knife to achieve a tad more Trompe l’oeil around the ballsack.