Listen: Chi Walthery, an artist herself, discusses building confidence in her art students

The Enterprise — Sean Mulkerrin
Chi Walthery, an artist herself, believes everyone can create art. A lifelong teacher, she builds confidence in her Altamont art students to trust their perceptions and abilities. The kids have emulated artists from Dr. Seuss and Mary Engelbreit to Edward Gorey and New Yorker cartoonists. Catch Walthery’s contagious enthusiasm on this week’s podcast.

 

 

Transcript:

00:00 Hello, this is Melissa Hale-Spencer, the editor of the Altamont Enterprise and last week we had Chi Walthery burst and that's the only word for it, burst into our news office because she was so excited about a contest her art students were in. So I thought this is a woman whose enthusiasm needs to be recorded. Welcome Chi.

00:24 So much. I'm happy to be here and happy to spread the word about my wonderful art students.

00:29 Well, I'd like to just start with a bit about you because I. This is the first time I'm meeting Chi. Just tell us first of all about your name, Chi. It's such an unusual name.

00:40 My name is actually a nickname that I chose for myself close to 40 years ago and it was something that I wanted to represent me as an artist and as a person and I had heard the name a couple of times and I fell in love with it and for a while about a month I kept trying out different names and st call me this, that and then finally settled on Chai. I like it, I like it a lot. And that was tea by the way. You were ahead of the game.

01:14 So just if you could, um, tell us first of all, I know when I talked to you briefly on the phone, you said something like it was always your dream to teach art and I got the feeling you had taught something else. Is that true? It is. So just tell us a little about your background.

01:33 Um, years ago, and I'm not a young chicken here. How old are you? I'm in at close to 70 now. Oh my gosh. And so when I first started teaching, my father said, well, you have a choice, you can be a nurse or a teacher, you know, it's kind of like you didn't have a lot of opportunities and I picked teaching and um, so after that, um, my father said I always was interested in art and as a child I always copied those little drawings in the comics where you could enter a contest.

02:05 Oh yes. And they had, like, I remember you had a exactly send

02:10 it in and I'd win and my dad would say, oh, it's a gimmick. So anyway, um, when I went to college I majored in teaching, but one of my majors was art and one of my majors was elementary and another major was special needs children working with different learning disabilities. So, um, as time went on, my father advised me, well, because he kept saying, well, there's only one art teacher usually in a school and you might not be the one chosen by. There's lots of other opportunities. So over the years I worked in many different states and different school districts and most of the time there were no arts classes to teach. So I worked in other areas, elementary and learning disabilities. And it worked out well for me. And then finally when I moved to Alabama. How did you end up in Ultima? How did you settle here?

03:06 My husband was transferred to a place in Deland sin called harvest homes and we, um, and I followed along pretty much saying, oh, well, let's see what I'm gonna do. And I kinda met lots of people in the community and I loved it here. I had never lived in an area where people were so friendly. He was at work every day and I would be meeting people in town and walking around and I, I kid come home and I'd say people make eye contact and they say hello first, that I was so surprised and I loved it. And so I kept making more friends and meeting more people and I started doing different things in the community and volunteering and helping people with different businesses and you know, it just don't came about. And then finally I met my really missed children because I had been teaching before I moved here and I was lonely for their presence and I was like, I have to meet some kids.

04:10 And I asked everyone over at Randall metals, can I borrow your grandkids? Can I take them out? Can I do anything? Can I teach them art? So it started that way. I started some classes in my home originally and it kept growing through word of mouth. And finally the need came that I went over and talked to pastor greg at the Lutheran Church and I said, can I talk to you about a need I have and I wouldn't be for their little committee. And they said we'd love to have you. So here I am. So you have art classes there regularly? I do. And I saw from the pictures that Michael Koff, our photographer took. I was picturing for some reason down in the church basement. But you're up where the beautiful windows, the classroom is in the church basement, which is really above ground level is. But um, but because we had such a good turnout, we needed a larger room and so we went up to the hole.

05:06 So tell us how many kids do you have in your class and what, like what's their age range right now? Presently I, um, I have classes on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday because my parents are elderly and many times I have to take long weekends and go visit them in New Jersey or help out. So, um, the classes are for anyone. Usually if I'm kindergarten up through fifth grade because I have students who have been with me for a long time, but by the time they go to the middle school they're so involved in other activities and they get home from school late and then there's homework. So I kind of lose that group. I had done a couple of things with adults as well and that where's, that was fun and fine, but my schedule was a little tight so it Kinda just didn't. So does your school, I call it an art school, does it have a name?

06:02 Does it have a. no, just ties kids. Okay. And now the thing that brought you to us was this contest and if you could just tell us a little about the Edward Gorey envelope. Pantera, such an exciting thing. I don't know if anyone knows about Edward Gorey, but he's quite a character. Um, he is deceased but his work and his legend lives on. He's from uh, New York and Cape Cod. And He, um, he's, he's a contemporary artist and writer illustrator. He wrote over 100 books and illustrated all of them. And then wrote an illustrated 60 other books for other people. Um, he was very eccentric. His house is now a museum and this one past summer I had an opportunity to go to his museum. Oh, tell us about that. And also could you put it, because I love his art, but it's hard to describe. It's kind of a topic in Victoria is just kind of give us in a nutshell how you as an artist would describe his art.

07:05 He would say the same thing. It's very, um, it's very different. It's kind of gory. Like his last name man, he, um, he was kind of a collector of many different things. So it's house at one time was filled with thousands of books, thousands and thousands of books and little whatever he found. He collected and they went to yard sales all over Cape Cod and brought back very unusual things, pieces of metal. I mean, you can't even imagine things that he saw our ed and he would put them together into creatures and different things. And his work, his style, very much like Edwardian and Victorian kind of costuming on there, on his characters. He's actually famous for doing the set of Dracula on Broadway and the costumes and the set. Um, he was really into mystery so a lot of his things were kind of creepy, but it's women's circle at the same time, music and you know, some things are a little deep.

08:13 And at first when I brought them up the contest application home and I looked at it, I was like, no, these kids are a little young and these are. But they were so filled with like Halloween's coming like, okay, let me present this to them and see how they react. So I told I we always check about different artists and I showed different artwork from different artists and we kind of imitate it, you know, or learn from it. And um, we had just finished doing a unit on Dr Seuss actually not long ago. That's something they must all be very familiar with to begin with for sure. So when I introduced Edward Gorey, they were, they were, they loved the idea because many students at especially young ages who are not artists, how they have a fear of drawing people, they want them to look beautiful and perfect all the time and this gave them so much freedom to make animal heads and different body parts and put them all together and make weird things out of whatever it might be that was in their little brains and they took off with it and just bloomed.

09:26 And um, so the contest consisted of designing an envelope is that right below that to draw the picture on the envelope and that envelope with the victor on it, had to go through the mail. So who knows who saw all those pictures and then it would go to this house on Cape Cod that had been at record and is now a museum. And they would choose winners. They chose winners and they had different categories for age groups. And then if you do, when you also get to have your entry put into one of the museums photo albums so that you can see all the past winners were and um, and also you get to be on their website. So the kids are excited about all of that, you know, and we talked about like, not everyone wins the contest, you know, so that was kind of, I try to incorporate a lot of life's learning lessons into my art and my classes and um, so we're like, well, if, if any one of us wins, they were so any one of us wins will be happy, you know, that's like a miracle in itself.

10:34 And so, um, this one little girl who actually won the contest is just adorable and she's very cute and girly and was, has bows in her hair and her name is Josie Martin. Josie Martin. Yes. And we have her picture. By the time this podcast is posted, you will have seen her picture in our paper holding up her artwork. So you'll get the same with josie creative. So anyway, I'm just thrilled. I'm her mother got the, the unnamed mail from the, from Edward Gorey museum that said we selected Josie artwork because it's so unique and it has the disappearing element in it and all these things that were really true of what Josie was creating. So. So can you describe to us what her artwork? It's Amanda. I believe it's a man and he's invisible and he just has these big sunglasses on and um, but he's holding ahead and he has a couple other heads like it can change his head getting on his mood and it was probably the first time to ever do anything with blood that's yellow bottles on the table. Like he was a scientist. It's fits, it's really quite.

11:54 Isn't that something? And so it looked like the way you prepared the kids actually work because judging by Mike coughs pictures, it looks like they were all celebrating and happy at this or they were so excited. They were very happy for her and they were happy for themselves because they thought we, we did it. So tell us about the gathering that took place yesterday.

12:15 Okay. So I been keeping with that philosophy of we all win, we all one, including myself. I felt very honored as a teacher that one of my students, one I thought we should have a celebration. So we, I went to Hanford and got a cake for them and we tried to imitate one Edward Glorious books and pictures and I had a big umbrella put on the cake and then we all stood under it and had our picture taken a couple of times with this big black umbrella and

12:48 that just so listeners know that's a frequent mean in a gories art. He'll have black

12:57 out there somewhere and lots of his pictures and books and thought. But, um, we just had a great celebration that children all presented their folders on tables and they had their, um, Edward Gorey entries. We have copies of them because you don't get them back after you send them in. So we have, we took photographs before they went and we had that on the table for anyone who came to the party that we can look at those entries. And then we also took it a little further. So a couple of weeks after the entries and they had to go in by the 27th of October. Um, that wasn't that long ago, but it seems like it. But anyway, they also started working on what he had a book that I had purchased called a flip book and it had a, it was divided into three sections and you've probably seen them, but the heads can be flipped with different body parts and then you have the middle and then the feet. And they did a fantastic job on those and we're so excited because they, well they had to line them up so that they had cut and match the body. And I took the pictures.

14:06 Oh that's neat. So another words like you could have a head of say, a young woman, a body of say middle aged man and feet of say a baby chicken on animals and things too. I see, I see. I see. So it would make different creatures by flipping the different sections. Oh, isn't that something? And they also added

14:27 little prompts because he had like little props and interest to his books. So they might've had like a glass of chocolate milk that's spilled or an umbrella or a brush or something in their hands or whatever it might've been that they've picked.

14:42 So I would just like to go back to Cape Cod and hear a little more about his house that you visited. If you can go, I have to tell you, a friend of mine

14:52 took me and she's quite a frequent museum, a person. She goes all over 10 very unique places and we run pipe God together and she goes, let's go to the Edward Gorey Museum. I'm like, oh, okay. And as little as a own. And when we first got there, I'm like, this is really weird and this is really kind of a strange sense of our and humor and you know, it's kind of because when you get into somebody, because I'm assuming it's since he didn't die all that long ago that it's set up. It isn't like recreating, say Emily Dickinson's house got his own stuff. So did you feel his presence? Did you feel you can absolutely feel his presence at every little inch as him and his house was quite a collection of things and they actually had to sift through many of his things from what I heard in, in the presentation that was given and they, they auctioned off lots of his possessions and there was so much stuff in the house that they had them set aside into different shows so you can come to the house and it will be different almost every time that they have a new show, which I think they might do once or twice a year.

16:09 And so the, the um, the day that I was there in the summer, this year, they had a scavenger hunt and it was taken from one of his books called, oh gosh, the ghastly. I can remember alphabet book on really weird ways that these children that their democracy very sick. But um, throughout the house are so many things that he used as images that he has stimulated his brain for his artwork. And you had to find clues. So you went on a scavenger hunt and you had to find the clues for that scavenger hunt. And then I spoke with someone else who said they went to another scavenger hunt. It was all so great. And so he was very, um, interested in mysteries and was friends with mystery writers of the time and um, he was just quite a unique person. So with all the various artists that you've instructed your students about, are there any that stand out?

17:09 I mean, this one certainly sounded unique, but are there other favorites that they've had? They love? They did love Dr Seuss and we learned a lot of things about his drawings and we were happy and actually we created Dr Seuss. I'm on paper, but we also get three dimensional things for Dr Seuss, which we're hoping to put on display during the Victorian holiday. I always have an art show. Hopefully there'll be one this year and this is December ninth and all that children will display their artwork. And um, hopefully that will happen. I'm not quite sure yet. We haven't said it in, set it down, but um, and they show all work and so those things should all be on display. I'm hoping people will come and visit and the artists are usually hanging around and talk to them and ask them questions. Oh, I bet they love it.

18:00 They also, like we just did a study on, for my little young ones, like kindergarten, first grade children, I was teaching them how to dress cylindrical vessels. They always want to make some kind of containers and there, you know, so we, we, I taught them my technique which is pretty common to draw, um, different circles of different sizes and you can connect them by the outside line and then he raced the middle and you can decorate them and it creates all kinds of different containers. And so we used a mackenzie childs catalogs at that time until look for designs and patterns. So we do a lot of that colors, designs, patterns to put on our vessels. And they loved that. And they love different children's illustrators. We study them because they're children. They read them, they're familiar with it. And do you do any of like the classic artists, I mean you don't have them imitating same Michelangelo or we do. Um, here's the cover of the New Yorker regular copy. Those are our guidelines is you can look at the picture. There's to be no violence or anything violent or any kind of weapons are not allowed to. If there's anything in the picture, I usually don't give them that cover, but they have to also change it to be the round picture. So there's something in the picture you have to change, you know? So they change it a little bit and it becomes their own original.

19:35 Oh, neat. Well one of the things I'd love to hear your thoughts on this as an art teacher, something that's kind of bothered me over the years is it seems like very young children are natural artists. You know, you can give very young child paint or crayons and they just fine and they just create. And it seems like the older they get, the more self conscious they get are eating. They stopped thinking of themselves as people who can do art. They start putting it in a category like so-and-so does. I mean, have you run into that and what are you, what do you do about that? Because it just seems like shutting off a whole part of yourself as you get older. But do you have any thoughts on my gosh,

20:22 that is like the premise of my, during part of my teaching philosophy, I feel that so many people, even adults say I can't draw, I can't. I believe everyone can do it and you just might need some guidelines and you need someone who knows about art and knows about human nature. Maybe I can just kind of bring that out of you confidence. Um, I give a lot of. When I first students, I always say, show me something, anything you want and um, and let me just see what you can do. I'm not giving you any guidelines. You can just do whatever you want. So I save that picture and I talked to them about it and they tell me about it. Well, I, I like this part of it and I realized I could do this better. Or, um, you know, my colorings that, so whatever it might take.

21:11 So I saved that picture and then um, my next group of activities that I usually do with them or what I call brain freeing activities and like even touched them sometimes and say, okay, we're going to get all your ideas about art emerged starting over again and we're going to just let you do some creative stuff. Like when, like when you were younger and they weren't afraid. And so I start with these scribble drawings. I called them and I just say, don't think about it. Take a pencil in your hand and just move it around on the paper anywhere your body and your mind tell it to go and then they get done. And then from there. And I have some samples of some scribble drawings that I made to give them inspiration. And sometimes we'll start with just one color and I teach them about monochromatic.

21:59 And then we might introduce other colors. And then as their drawings become more complex through the different series of mind, freeing activities, they might start to put little eyes into these little dots to make creatures or whatever and they love it and they can learn shading in that way. Like some areas are darker, some are lighter, some have patterns, and they really take off on patterns. And we use Mary angle bright too. We Love Mary Angle. Great. She is so great with. She'll hurt her artwork is childlike and the kids love it and they can relate. And so they put lots of patterns and colors and you know, just get rid of a lot of rules. You know, you're a rule breaker. So what does it do for a kid or an adult to have art in their life? How, what does that do for you? I feel that it really frees you and gives you an avenue of peace.

23:01 And I feel like in some, in some, in many times, you don't have to think, you just have to move and feel and it might unrest some turmoils you might have it. I mean, this is what it does for me when I'm doing art, I feel happy. I feel patient, I feel peaceful, I feel like I'm unraveling, you know, different emotional things and just being free and you know, taking pride. I don't think that art is something that you should worry about other people's judgment of it, you know? And that's the other thing I teach the kids like, Oh wow, this is ray and I'm looking at what's your favorite part? So we have critique sessions almost after every class. So when this children are working on their art, I always say, okay, come for critique and we look at each person's artwork and they have to put in art terms usually.

24:02 How do you feel about their art? What's the best part of this picture? What do you like? Give me some examples of some art terms. What, what might they say? Say something like, well, I like the, you know, they're young. So I liked the color. I like the shape of that or never thought of putting those two things together. Or I like the way one overlaps over the other one. And you could see through the part that's overlapping where they can, I mean there's an infinite number of art things that can happen in a sister. So when you first said that it sounded counterintuitive. If you're trying to get them to free up to then have a critique. But I hear from the way you're describing it, it's not necessarily a negative thing. It's a sharing of perception art. We believe very much in copying each other's work.

24:46 I say you can't copy in school but you can come here. So sometimes during the middle of a session I'll say, okay, time to pass because we might be working on some particular project and I'll sit and they all pass one seat to the left and goes around and they look at that person's are and what their interpretations or of what our activity is. And they get ideas and the, the, it keeps growing that way, you know? And they keep on getting new ideas and then it goes to the next one so that by the county come to critique. They've already kind of seen some of the stuff in that person's drawing that they may have already liked or they want a copy or like, look, I did it too. You no idea. Great. Well, so you mentioned some of these students you've had for a number of years.

25:32 Is that right? Yes. I know you don't want to use specific names or anything, but can you just kind of talk about how that shapes someone to have, you know, because our teacher in school, you usually have just one year, then you're onto the next. I mean, how, how does really gets, lets me see their growth. We always keep that first picture too. And they are surprised themselves when they look at that first picture. They'll belt. I believe that's how I used to draw on from year to year. They see um, how they've grown. But um, usually I take them right after kindergarten after they've gotten the rules down at school. So, um, they kind of come in and I present are in the classroom. Like this is really an art lesson. It's not just you do whatever you want. We were going to learn something today, you know, in my review what we, what we cover for the day and what the end we learn being words that they might let know, like the monochromatic or, and this is funny because a lot of the students I have are siblings of other students that I might have had or cousins or friends or whatever.

26:39 And one of my favorite stories is one parent, her just entered kindergarten a few years ago and I and her other siblings came to classes but she will always trail along with them to pick them up or drop them off. And so I said, you know, I think she's ready to come to art class if she would like to, you know. And so she goes with Alaska Lasker, I don't know, you know, because she was only in kindergarten and her. And she asked the little girl and said, I'm shy. I think she might be ready to come to our class. Are you interested in going? She and the little girl with the greatest enthusiasm like clutches herself and goes, Oh my gosh, I've been waiting my whole life to go to her whole life. She sent me this and it tests and I had to save it. It's one of my favorite expressions.

27:32 Can you tell us a little about your own artwork, because you've mentioned several times yourself as an artist. What kind of will tell you. One of my favorite mediums to use in the past had been watercolors because it was, you know, it dried and I didn't have to worry about oil mess it, you know, whatever. Um, and it's a very spontaneous kind of art and you seem like a spontaneous kind of easy to fix, either has a kind of really plan and we do use that old philosophy and plan your work and work your plan. They think of that what you're gonna do before it's on the paper. So, um, and then I started to do, um, I had done some oils and I had done some acrylics over the years and I'm, one of my, in fact I had sold a couple commissioned pieces to a parent of one of my students just recently and I made a donation to the asthma and elementary school. This is a funny story. This parent said, I'm going to read you the teacher's lounge lounge, but it's really the teacher's bathroom doing it because it needs to be redone and it's my gift to the school. Would you consider, can I buy a piece of art? I'm like, no, I can donate a piece of art. So it created something modern and abstract for the teacher's lounge. And the, I always say, well, I hang over the throne.

29:05 So you used to do watercolor, you were saying and now you've, it sounds like you've moved to something else. Say Acrylic. And I'm experimenting more with abstract, which I really didn't do before. And I think through the lessons and giving the children lessons, I become more re released an angle to do more. As was my next question of teaching, has it, because I used to teach, not art but like poetry writing and it influenced my own writing, so I was wondering if it is. I still don't get to do as much as I would like. In fact, I taught high school art for a semester for like in Pennsylvania where I lived and I thought, oh, this is great. They have clay wheels. They'll be able to do that. Pottery. I'll be able to do all this different stuff. Not One thing did I produced three. That's semester sir. I was so busy getting students ready to put their portfolios together for for college or do different things. It was just. It was a great experience, but definitely different than I went in. Thinking it was going to be. Teaching takes an enormous amount of energy. Do you have any closing thoughts? Anything we haven't touched on you think is important for people to know about you or art or your class or.

30:29 Well, I'm. I'm up for all kinds of new possibilities. I believe each day presents a door to me to open. Like today, being here, I never thought this happened to me in my life and I'm excited about it and I have lots of lots of stories and in closing I will say that my name was mentioned in the paper once before when I spied it, a cat that was trapped in the. Oh, I remember there was a lost cat and they were trying to find it and you had him and I stop it, cat in the window and I took a photo and I'm like, you know, and I, I didn't think it was really trapped in there, but then I read an article in the paper saying we're looking for Romeo, Romeo, Romeo, and I pulled up the felt I'm reading the paper and I pulled it up on my phone and I'm like, that looks like Romeo. So I wrote to the, I texted the person that I said, is this rubbery? So an artist had a practical solution. Very good. Thank you so much. Thank you.

 

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