The Crossing Point: Selected Talks and Writings

IV: The Crossing Point

IV In September of 1966,1 was invited by Vilma Harrington, of the Community Church in New York City, to lead a retreat of Unitarian Universalist Women, at Senexet, Connecticut. Since I was innocent both of "retreats" and of Unitarian Universalists, it worked out pretty well. In October I was invited by members of the Wallingford Potters' Guild to lead them in a Clay Retreat. It was a fruitful challenge. We spent the week end together at the Art Center, cooking our meals and sleeping on the floor, to keep the form of our retreat intact. Certain exercises in clay and inner source I tried out there for the first time: working, for example, from a sound, from a feeling for a particular space (clay hung across a window, for example, or off the edge of a table), to hold a particular object (like a shadow) or to fill something (like a seedpod). In November I left for England, to study projective geometry and plant growth with Olive Whicher for four weeks at Emerson College in Sussex. I had met Miss Whicher earlier in the year in this country, had read with great excitement the book she and George Adams wrote, The Plant Between Sun and Earth, and had taken a summer workshop with her at Threefold Farm in Spring Valley, New York. It seemed to me that I had come upon the mathematical counterparts to the intuitions upon which my book Centering was based. These experiences influenced what I had to say when I returned from England in March 1967 to speak to graduate students in Art Education at Pennsylvania State University. Edward Mattil, then head of the Department of Art Education there, asked me to prepare a lecture which could afterwards be printed, and I took this as an opportunity to create a text which would be alive on the page as well as in speech. The visual experience of the page served the purposes of both score and canvas — perhaps even of a sculptural impulse to model the page, according to the breath of the phrasing, and the dynamics of meaning and emphasis. I used the two colors of my typewriter ribbon and the space of the page as my materials. I also wanted to assimilate into the flow of the talk the different moods of "voice," rather than limiting myself to the monochrome delivery of lecture models. I moved therefore as naturally as I could through a continuity of poetry and story and exposition to the closing prayer and sung song. This was the first time that I had made a song to sing as part of a lecture. This one seems to me to have in its form the flavor of a "spiritual." Also for this occasion I wanted to connect the talk with the Easter season in which it occurred. I gave this talk at Penn State in March, 1967, and at Swarthmore College and Rhode Island College in April, 1967. Later, the text was published (with an introduction by Professor Mary E. Godfrey) as No. 3 in the series "Penn State Papers in Art Education." As presented in this volume,it follows the original typescript. 41 The Crossing Point: Nine Easter Letters on the Art of Education i Ladies and Gentlemen, I want to talk to you about art education and the art of education about the relation of art to education as a whole education of the wholeperson to extend the feeling for art to include all the arts: song, dance, theater, drawing, modeling, handcraft, building, indeed the arts of government and of community, the arts of conflict, of history, the art of science, of prophecy and prayer, the arts of teaching and learning. ü In New York City I sat in mybathtub thinking about this talk, and looking at the bouquet of four red anemones and one blue one on my table and thinking about being home in America again and the people I want to seebefore I return to England April 15, and I suddenly understood that this talk was going to have to bear witness to 42 my feeling about heart and art, about living and arting, and I had a vision of how I would bring a bouquet of beautiful flowers when I came to meet you and I would make bread and bring it too, I thought of making many small loaves which would have the...