“Art should be something that liberates your soul, provokes the imagination, and encourages people to go further.” – Keith Haring.

The Magic Bottle by Mark Giersch

Anxiety paralyzed me as I chewed my No. 2 lead pencil.  I watched my second-grade teacher as she paced the aisle of my small one-school classroom, handing back second-grade classes' spelling tests.

I knew I did poorly, but not how poorly.

Eventually, she arrived at my desk with a heavy sigh and a frown, which I took as a sign of her great disappointment in me.

As expected, but with a pit in my stomach, I took the paper and saw the U for unsatisfactory. Ashamed, I crumbled the paper in my hands and threw it into my desk as a tear rolled down my cheek.

I spent the whole night before studying the assigned words with flashcards at the kitchen table with my exasperated older sister asking me words, my writing them down, and she noting my mistakes.   “Sounds it out.”

I tried.   “Up on.”

No, It’s one word, not two.  Upon.  Like once upon a time.  Not get up on the couch.”

I heard my teacher's voice as she told my mom at a parent-teacher conference.  “Mark is a good kid with immense potential.  Everyone likes him.  But, he needs to buckle down and study harder.”

No one seemed to understand that I tried as hard, to the best of my ability, and with the support of the angels in heaven, I could never get things right.  I didn't see the world like other kids.

My world was kinesthetic, not flat.

Words twisted.  Numbers danced.  And backward was forward, while forward was backward.  Somehow, things moved around in my head as if trolls and elves came in the night and moved facts around.

Compassionately, my teacher said to me as I put my hands in my head and laid it on the desk.  “You’ll do better next time; just try harder.”

I didn’t know how to tell my teachers something was wrong with me and that, no matter what I did or didn’t do, something was very wrong with me, and I would never be like the other kids who seemed so effortlessly to know and learn ‘simple’ things that were beyond my grasp.

Within seconds, she walked to the front of the room and told the class to ‘put your things away and go to the art room.”

“I don’t want to go.  I didn’t deserve to play.  I needed to do better. I raised my hand.  She called on me.  “I need to study.”

As compared to a moment before when I experienced her disappointment, at that moment, I sensed her excitement.  “Go.  Today will be different.  Mrs. McCreary has planned something special.  You won’t be disappointed.”

I didn’t believe her.  Usually, art class was boring, and we played with glue, scissors, paper, crayons, and pencils, everything we had at home.  Plus, my parents didn’t appreciate art.  The closest thing to art we had in our house was pocket matches that told me if I could draw an animal on it, I could win a big prize, attend their art school, and be famous.

Besides spelling, I needed help with math and learning to tell time the old-fashioned way (before LED and battery-operated clocks), I couldn’t grasp the backward and forward concept of minutes and hours. I panicked when I was called on.   I added and subtracted on my fingers and toes, pondering what was correct; for example, was it ten-fifty-five or five till eleven, or sixty-five minutes until noon?  When the teacher asked how many minutes until one p.m. I froze.

When I reluctantly arrived in the art room, the art supplies filled the tables. She brought tin cans, bottles, magazines, glue, aluminum foil, jars, glasses, crayons, jars of tempura, paper plates, brushes, popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, staples, staplers, and lots of other things that kids love making a mess of and getting in trouble with.

She then said, “Today, we will use our imagination. Make anything you want.  Combine two or more items to make a piece of art you would be proud to give your parents.  It can be a painting, a sculpture, a vase, etc.  Make something ordinary extraordinary, giving it a new life.

I looked at her quizzically.

“I promise.  Today's class will help you see things from a new and different perspective.”

Recently, I went as I took the crumbled paper out of my desk and placed it in my pocket.

When I arrived at the make-shift art room, the tables were filled with boxes.  The boxes were filled with anything and everything a mischievous child could wish for; tempura paints, crayons, scissors, bottles, pens, cardboard, silverware, etc...

Mrs. McCreary smelled like my grandmother, like roses from a power box.  Her arms flapped as she walked, and she had North America's biggest smile and reddest lips.  I always felt more lighthearted around her.  She surveyed the classroom, then looked right at me and said.

No one had to tell me twice.  I ran to the front of the room and chose three things: a jar of glue, a pressed bottle with indentations, half circles, and then a roll of aluminum foil.

After we were all done, she walked around the room and noted our choices.  When she saw mine, she reached into another box and handed me a different bottle of glue. As if she knew me better than I did myself, she said, "This will work better."

I went to work with the intensity of a sculptor making a masterpiece.  I pasted the foil on one side and used my fingers to create indentations, like a stone rubbing or relief.  I was surprised I enjoyed the process. I knew I was doing something new and different: turning an ordinary object into something beautiful, waking me up, relaxing, giving me peace, and taking me away from my strict mental world.

When we returned to the regular classroom my teacher asked me what I had made, I told her with pride and joy that it was a vase, candlestick, or planter for my mother.

When I got home, I excitedly held the bottle behind my back and told my mother to close her eyes until I told her to open them.

She did.

“Open them.”  I held the bottle in front of me.  “I made this for you.”

Her smile grew as wide as the horizon line.  And she looked at me with soft, blue, buttery eyes and told me it ‘was the most beautiful bottle she had ever seen.’  She stared at it with amazement as if I gave her a diamond necklace.

“It’s the most beautiful bottle I have ever seen.”   Then she held me to her.

I almost cried with joy.

The following day at school, I struggled with time again until my teacher said, “What did you learn yesterday in your art class.”

When my teacher asked me what I had made, I told her with pride and joy that it was a vase, candlestick, or planter for my mother.

I held the bottle gingerly, going home.  When I got home, I held the bottle behind my back and told my mother to close her eyes until I told her to open them.

She did.

“Open them.”  I held the bottle in front of me.  “I made this for you.”

Her smile grew as wide as the horizon line.  And she looked at me with soft, blue, buttery eyes and told me it ‘was the most beautiful bottle she had ever seen.’  She stared at it with amazement as if I had given her a diamond necklace.

“It’s the most beautiful bottle I have ever seen.”   Then she held me to her.

I almost cried with joy.

The following day at school, I struggled with time again until my teacher said, “What did you learn yesterday in your art class.”

I stared at her, clueless.

“Remember what you learned yesterday and apply those principles to learning to tell time.”

Somehow, something mysteriously clicked in my brain with numbers, times, directions, and dates as naturally as had using my fingers to press the foil into the bottle.  In my mind's eye, the hands of a clock almost began to move, not haphazardly, backward and forwards, taunting me.  Instead, I could see things from a higher, loftier, unique perspective.  I 'got' seconds, minutes, hours, and days.

In math class, the same thing happened with numbers and letters.  Black, untold mysteries became visible, and light was at the end of the tunnel.  I could envision things instead of obsessing about them, trying to pound them into my head.  My grades improved.  Schoolwork became easier, brighter, and more understandable, and I began to intuitively relate to my classes and I found I was no longer counting on my fingers, hands, or toes, and memorizing, or cheating.

After that, I played more and worried less.  My childhood returned.  My grades improved, and I loved school.  My classmates were no longer my competition.

The world was filled with the same intensity, but instead of running from it, I ran to it.  I sat down in the planted fields and savored, touched and smiled for the first time the tens of greens, thousands of colors, and millions of textures in the world around me. I smiled inside and marveled at the world's beauty.

To my surprise, years later, when I graduated from college, economics, statistics, and languages were my favorite classes

I remember all this because art changed my life.

To this moment, when I am worried, anxious, or tense, I step back, reflect, gather my wits and things around me, and put my fingers to use.

I'm hoping you'll do the same.