This is Personal
We asked advocates to submit stories about how the arts have personally impacted their lives. We’ve chosen our favorites to share each day during Arts Advocacy Week 2020, to show legislators that ALL South Carolina citizens have a dog in this fight.
Stories are powerful and so are the arts.
My sixth grade art teacher was Miss Linda Taylor. She was young and energetic. She encouraged us to draw “outside of the box”. She taught us techniques. She taught us about the “old masters”.
We drew. We created prints. We painted. We made clay and wire sculptures. We made puppets. I still have some of my pieces that my mom saved.
Linda not only encouraged creativity and imagination but she also cared for the wellbeing of her young artists.
Linda called my mom in one day to suggest that she take me to have my eyes examined. You see, in class we were drawing landscapes and flowers. All of my trees and foliage were “green blobs”. There were no leaves.
I got glasses and my world changed!
I say this to not only acknowledge Miss Taylor’s love for her profession and her students but to say that indeed her caring and love for art sparked my love and necessity for the arts. The importance of the arts- visual art, music, theater and dance grew as I grew.
My interest in the arts initially resulted in my secondary study of interior design.
My education resulted in a B.S. in psychology.
My life experiences led me to a professional career as a lead cardiac sonographer at the Medical University of SC.
Even then, the arts were still an important part of my everyday life.
Each heart that I examined was a work of art- or I tried to make them into works of art.
Each echocardiogram was a two-dimensional sonographic masterpiece with colors of the rainbow carrying streams of reds, yellows, greens and blues throughout our bodies; colors that assisted in a diagnosis and oft times a cure.
I carry my appreciation and love for the arts into my retirement from healthcare.
My husband and I live in southern Spartanburg County and provide a space in downtown Woodruff where children, families, residents and visitors can experience a variety of cultural activities that hopefully will encourage their creativity and imagination. We hope to be able to create experiences that will motivate people to “draw outside the box”. We hope to be able to create experiences that may help to develop scientists, inventors, doctors, leaders, teachers, entrepreneurs, artists, workers, families and citizens that will benefit our community, our county and our state.
This is part of my story.
Stories help us share parts of ourselves with others.
Storytelling is an art.
Yes, stories are powerful.
Stories can change lives and so do the arts.
Karyn Page-Davies
Stone Soup Storytelling Institute, President/Director
I have worked as a professional freelance photographer in Columbia for over 25 years, and I was given the opportunity, by Julia Brown with Arts Access South Carolina, to teach a class of adult students with disabilities how to take photographs. I have always been a pedant for teaching others how to hold the camera correctly and giving them the reasons why they needed to have their fingers placed exactly here and not there!
On my first day teaching this group of students how to use their cameras, I saw how they tried & tried to do exactly as I said even though some of the students fingers were not as nimble as others. At our first day trip to a park, I taught them about shadows and watched how excited they were when they captured a shadow of a tree in their photograph. It was during this time, that I realized it did not matter how they held their cameras, it was the joy I saw in their eyes once they captured a beautiful photo that made me realize “this is why I love photography so much.”
Anita Dantzler
In case you missed the other stories this week!:
