Belated Honors for a couple public school art teachers.

[Ray Cover]

Recently on facebook I was able to reunite with some of my old high school friends. Now the school I went to was a small rural school. Potosi High School district pretty much covered the entirety of Washington County.

Come to find out two of my high school buddies are are also making their living from their artwork. One is a commercial illustrator and the other is doing well with his printmaking through the gallery show circuit. For a couple rural school Jr High and High School art teachers to have students carry on into art careers is quite a testament to the job they did. It also shows that you don't have to go to a large highly funded suburban school to get a decent cultural education.

John Tweedie and J. Ellis Smith My hat is off to you and I thank you for the work you did with young people so many years ago.

 

[DakotaDocMartin]

John Tweedie and J. Ellis Smith My hat is off to you and I thank you for the work you did with young people so many years ago.

If they are still alive, you should try to contact them and let them know how you guys turned out. It would probably be one of the high points in their lives to get such a belated thanks.

 

[Marcus Hunt]

You were very lucky Ray. My "art teacher" was hopeless. Looking back I don't think he actually "taught" us anything. We'd just get a list of subjects to paint/draw at the beginning of the lesson and were expected to get on with it. No lessons on light, how to shade, composition, etc but I do remember one lesson on perspective.

Having a good teacher is inspirational and they deserve to be recognised, my old English teacher (Mr Waugh) was just such a person; a lovely man who's teaching and philosophy helped set his classes up for life in the real world. But our art teacher, despite being an excellent artist, was absolutely useless.

I agree with Doc, if it's possible to make contact I bet they'd love to hear from you.

 

[Ray Cover]

I had teachers liket ha tin college Marcus but these two guys were good. Mr Smith passed one several years ago but John Tweedie is still alive. HE is actually a good friend of my dads so I do see him from time to time.

Ray