Teacher's Temporary Art

This story caught my attention, and reminds me of the Buddist tradition of creating artwork from colored sand...and letting it blow away or get walked upon when it is done. Or the 'prayer flag' tradition of creating beautiful silken flags while holding a particular intent or prayer...only to hang them in the wind, allowing nature to unravel them back to threads. They believe once this is done, the prayer has been answered.



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...st_read_module


When I was in high school at St. Alphonsus in Dearborn, we had a curiously quiet male teacher who used two of the three walls of chalkboard in his corner room to create fabulous ethereal landscapes/moonscapes...trying to remember his name...but the imagery remains stuck in my photo-memory 35 years later. It was eerie, but remarkably beautiful.

One day, one of the usual suspect troublemakers was tasked by one of the authorities to clean a few room's chalkboards and slap the erasers outside. It was a common form of discipline/drudgery, which never actually worked, as far as I could tell. The next morning, this particular teacher/artist was devastated to find his many week's worth of work simply vanished. I remember the controversy, and being oddly emotionless about it all.

This was many years before digital photography, and I'm not sure anyone ever took regular film images of it before it was erased.


Temporary beauty...reflecting our temporal lives...

Come to think of it, the TEACHER was nonplussed...the student body, especially a few of his female admirers, were the devastated ones.


Curious...