Instructor, Teacher, Mentor ... I whittle

When I reached Junior high, a wonderful thing happened. I had been attending "Member's Classes" at the Cleveland Museum of Art since early childhood and suddenly I was moved to a class with the world's greatest teacher. Not only that, when I moved to a new school, I discovered that wonderful teacher was also the art teacher for the school!  Six days a week! (and continued into high school) 

Up until then, I had had plenty of instructors but Fred Vollman was a renaissance man! He had a passion for everything and shared it with all his students. I learned much more than "art" in his classes.

Fred taught all kinds of art, watercolor, oil painting, calligraphy, costume design, poster making, pottery and ceramics, sculpture, copper enameling, silver jewelry making, paper mache, using a lathe,  and even wood carving, are some of what I remember.

His teaching style was each subject divided into three. First you learned the techniques and made a test piece. Then there were a few things you could choose to do using those techniques, and thirdly, if you finished early, you could use what you had learned in a project of your choice.

Somewhere around there are three horse carvings made in mahogany. (I was very much into horses in those days) The last one is bucking with its back feet in the air. Suddenly, I began to find more success in my life and much of that was due to the mentoring of Fred Vollman. By the time I graduated from high school, I was not a talented artist but I knew I wanted to become an art teacher and do for even one kid, what had been done for me.

I still like this teaching style and find the new woodcarving merit badge booklet has a section on making a test piece to demonstrate the variety of cuts needed for working with knives and wood. When I was at an OA conclave in Washington State, I met a woman woodcarving MB counsellor that went one step further to turn this test piece into a neckerchief slide. It is among the objects in the above picture.

I have never taught it that way but there is a certain positive aspect of being able to wear something you have made (like the dog pin in my first post) as a reminder of your success. I have sat Boards of Review for Scouts wearing a slide they have made for the Merit Badge. (I have also sat BORs for boys with the badge who couldn't even remember what they made to get the badge ... and they had to make two things!) I often wonder what kind of instructor they had at the time. The world could use a lot more Fred Vollmans.