4: teaching art for the job corps

National Art Education Association

4: Teaching Art for the Job CorpsAuthor(s): Harry SpiegelSource: Art Education, Vol. 19, No. 6 (Jun., 1966), pp. 22-24Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3190858 .

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HARRY SPIEGEL

IN LESS THAN AN HOUR a disbelieving corpsman at the Blue Jay Job Corps Center in Marien- ville, Pennsylvania, had made a turtle with a moving head, from several odd pieces of wood. Another corpsman was chopping out the body of a large bird. Still others were hesitantly beginning to work from an assortment of scrap materials. Moving among them were sculptors Berthold Schmutzhart and his wife, Slai Thong,--demonstrating, suggest- ing, encouraging and praising.

There were similar scenes at eight other Job Corps Conservation Centers where the Schmutzharts worked during the past summer teaching corpsmen how to create from wood, wire, tin cans or whatever was available. They opened a whole new world of ideas and achievements for the corpsmen and staff alike, and reactions to their work from the centers can best be summed up by Wellfleet Center Direc- tor Jim Corson's remark, "Give me more Schmutz- harts, they're wonders!"

Thirty-seven-year-old Berthold, a professional sculptor, artist and craftsman, teaches drawing and perspective at the Corcoran School of Art in Wash- ington, D.C. Born in Salzburg, Austria, he came to this country in 1958 as an exchange teacher and became an American citizen a year and a half ago.

Several years ago he taught in a neighborhood training program in Washington with Harry Schoep- ple, now a district supervisor for conservation centers. The program was for high school dropouts, aimed at stimulating their interest in creative and productive work. When Schoepple joined the conservation centers program, he called Mr. Schmutz- hart and said, "I have something I want you to do," and the Schmutzharts were introduced into Job Corps.

Mrs. Schmutzhart, also a sculptor, is an advanced student at the Corcoran. She is a native of Bangkok, Thailand, and comes from generations of wood- carvers.

A corpsman made whatever he was interested in making-a boat in a bottle, a guitar, a crucifix, a name plate, a piece of jewelry. But in most cases, the first problem was getting him to try.

"You see, many corpsmen are convinced they are failures, so they don't like to try anymore and fail again," Schmutzhart said. "So we started with a short term project that will show him quickly that of course he can do something. I take a piece of wood-whack, whack, whack-and I have an animal's leg. So the boy tries and he does it. In 50 minutes, another has a turtle with a head that will move, and he himself has done it. Another in two hours has nearly finished a real boat he can ride in."

Sometimes when a corpsman would look at a hatchet and a piece of wood, he would say that he didn't think he could do it. Mrs. Schmutzhart, who is a tiny 5'? tall, would say, "Do it like this." She would grab the hatchet and start swinging, and the corpsman would be impressed and try himself.

The Schmutzharts use a minimum of tools-a hatchet and several woodworking chisels ("We don't have time to teach proficiency in power tools at first") and whatever scrap materials they can rum- mage from trash cans, center grounds and carpentry shops. Their initial aim is to help the corpsman quickly gain the confidence and self-satisfaction a person gets from producing something himself.

"If a boy makes a chair, the first one may be crooked, but he has done it. The next time he will want it to be better and will consult a center car- penter, perhaps, to learn how to improve his skill," Schmutzhart said.

The Schmutzharts also worked with staff both in the centers and in a workshop at the Springfield (Mass.) College training session for resident work- ers, counselors, and recreation specialists. They showed the ways that articles can be made quickly and simply and how in making something a Corps- man can be made aware of a vast area of life about him.

"At Cumberland Gap, the men were so interested in music, that we made many instruments. While one

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made his guitar, we talked about how air carries sound waves, the ear picks them up and the nerves take the message," Schmutzhart said. "The boy bal- ancing the head of his turtle learns about weight, leverage and center of gravity."

"You see, being deprived or disadvantaged, or whatever you want to call it, doesn't mean just money problems, or trouble with reading or arith- metic. For many it means they don't know the how's and why's of things or that there is more to life than eating and sleeping and that all around there is much to understand and care about."

Every center they worked in shows evidence that the Schmutzharts were there. Colorful wooden ani- mals made by corpsmen stand in front of the admin- istration building of one center. Staff offices display a variety of wood carvings, a pine cone bird, and a wire figure which are gifts from the corpsmen. Some of the men sent their work to their families or girl friends, but most of them keep them in their dorms.

"They are proud of what they do. We tell them, 'Many people can go to the store and buy something. What you make is yours and there is no other one like it in the world'," Schmutzhart said, and added, "Everyone wants something that is just his. That is what home is. It is having stuff sitting around that means something special to you."

It is far more than mere facility with a hand tool that Schmutzhart is striving for. He summed it up.

"Everyone has a space or place in the world, and it is a teacher's job to help him find that place.

"Art is just as essential to our lives and these Job Corps youngsters as any other force or influence. They need a balanced diet, not merely of the physi- cal things but the artistic. Since man became what we may call civilized he has had science. He also needs art, and this is where our job comes in as art teachers.

"We try to show these young people that there is great pleasure and fulfillment in art, in the worth of working toward the acquisition of such things, but even more important, to become aware of the boun- ties in the world.

"It comes down to even such a simple thing as seeing the beauty of putting a flower in a vase. We can't expect him to get excited right away over a Rembrandt. He must start slowly. We found that with Job Corps boys we start with one picking up a pretty stone, which is more than an ordinary stone, and he owns it. It is all his alone, and he can admire it and go on from there.

"My wife and I found that we can begin to show the boys that there is beauty in a piece of wood, a stone, a picture, and also to let them look for them- selves.

"For one boy, perhaps we can show him a tree that has branches outstretched that make it look like a cross. Then, perhaps we can apply a few cuts and

start him on the way to making a Christ figure and he will go on eagerly to make his own wooden con- ception of the Crucifixion.

"For other boys, a piece of utility pole may serve as the trunk of an animal, a log may serve as a starting point for a totem pole. Another may need only a few hints as to how to use wood as a sound- ing board in designing his own version of a lute, or banjo, or whatever his imagination leads him to."

The opinion was offered that he and his wife had done a very worthwhile and generous thing in giv- ing up most of a summer to work with Corpsmen.

"I don't consider it a patriotic action," he said earnestly. "I think it is a selfish thing on our parts, because without preserving these things, this ap- proach to art, we face a society that may lose these things. If the energies of our young people are not channeled into good areas, they can turn instead, to say, militaristic thoughts."

It was evident that Schmutzhart was far from for- getting the horrors of the Hitler terror that en- veloped central Europe, and then involved the world.

He continued, "The artist, and the scientist, can give these Job Corpsmen objectives, aims, worthwhile ones. They can impart hope in these youngsters to win a full share in society instead of being part of the deprived and impoverished. They learn in these new, and more civilized efforts that they can work and soon get their rewards."

He pointed out that not only was their teaching at the Conservation Centers a step toward awaken- ing a sense of beauty among the boys, but it was also practical, as it led the boys to more courses in reading and writing so that they might communicate better-how they might work out the problem of how long a lever would need to be to lift a log, a boulder, or some other heavy object.

"They are learning through courses that they can communicate not only in words, but in pictures, in music. They learn something of how and why things work; and we tried to relate them, We try to tie the material to the world and show its link with other things as well as with history.

"For example, a boy would dig a hole, and we could make it clear to him that this was more than just a hole, that it might provide the base for a new structure that he might even be able to build himself. Very important too, the boy realized that he had participated, that part of the eventual product was of his doing. He was involved and he was part of the society that so often had somehow neglected him, passed him by, ignored him and his right to recognition and opportunity."

Will the Schmutzharts do it again this year? His reply was short and unmistakably sincere, "I hope so."

Harry Spiegel is with the Office of Economic Op- portunity, Washington, D.C.

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4: teaching art for the job corps

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