Besides my dad who taught me so much, I’m perplexed by how few of my teachers pop in my memory. I could chalk this up to daydreaming in class which was almost a diagnosed condition for me (my 3rd grade teacher had my parents in to tell them “Gary is slow.”) And I think the source of my daydreaming came from immersion in Nature at an early age (Hawaii) and culture (Italy for two years.)
It is “moments” that pop. Drawing bookmarks in an art class in grade seven. Being called Pancho by my Spanish teacher. A parasitology research project in 9th grade which used cockroaches as host for whom I was solely responsible. Drawing a sequence of growing chicken embryos. Learning blues scales from Joe Berger and jazz compositions from Joe Monk.
If I had to call out one teacher for teacher appreciation week, it would be Krishna Reddy. He taught Viscosity Color Printmaking one summer at Stonybrook. He showed us how to use aquatint, the process by which you sprinkle ground on the plate to resist the acid that etches the zinc surface, giving a stippled look. Krishna described this as boulders landing on the soft ground. And the acid eats away everything except conical pillars below the ground which when inked, delivers a dot to the paper. He described this as a spectacular mountain range on the plate — that was what got me 😮
It’s something that I saw again in Cappadocia, Turkey where hard igneous rock propelled by volcanos land in the soft sedimentary rock. Rainwater carves out the soft rock between the pillars.
#teacherappreciationweek
