Five Habits of Highly

Imaginative Families
FIVE HABITS OF HIGHLY IMAGINATIVE FAMILIES

F
or five years we have interviewed young artists and writers, along with their teachers,
in order to capture the thoughts, efforts and experiences that lie behind their works.
But there was always a third presence in the interviews: family. “My mother
said…; my dad read…; my aunt gave me…; my step-father used to take me…” ran
through the stories, like a chorus or a heart-beat. The message was clear: young artists
are not born, they are raised. Daily, families buffer, offer, ask, give and teach.

So this year, we asked the families of Scholastic Award recipients and other young artists
to share their wisdom about raising creative children. Many family members talked about
the concrete choices they had made: never owning a television, making trips to museums,
Above: Talia Shabtay, and going without in order to afford art lessons. Less concrete, but possibly even more
student award recipient powerful, were the “ways of being” which threaded through their stories. From those stories,
from The Scholastic we have culled a list—call it the five habits of highly imaginative families:
Awards of 2003, and her
grandfather posing with
his portrait at the Creation: Making Things
Corcoran Gallery of Art,
Washington, DC.
I am in love with travel. Even though I wasn’t born in this country I know the
Photo by James Kegley.
national parks better than most Americans do. And everywhere I take photos to
have those places with me always. Growing up, my daughter used to say to me,
“Mommy, no more pictures.” Now she is an amazing digital artist.

A very few of the family members we interviewed were artists in the sense of earning
their livings as poets or photographers. But all of them invented: travel photos, studies of
Digital image by hermit crabs, a newsletter for aviators. In many cases, they made sacrifices in order to be
Julia Chesky, from
makers, whether that was leaving safer, more well-established jobs, saving for trips, or
The Scholastic Awards
of 2004, Photography
giving up sleep for the sheer pleasure of being free to create in the hours after work. It is
Portfolio Gold Award. this appetite for creating something where there was nothing that seems contagious,
City landmarks super- indelible and sustaining for their sons and daughters. Young artists may not need to grow
imposed on photographs up among published authors or print makers. An album of Zion National Park may well
of nature. be enough if it brings together appetite and the pleasure of invention.

Left: Maxime Lacroix, age 11,
at the opening reception of P.S.
Delight: Being Amazed
I always framed her drawings. To this day, my office walls are filled with her
work. I love looking at the progression. She wants me to get rid of the old
ones; she hates having people look at them. But I won’t give up walking in
every day and being amazed at the progression.

FIVE HABITS OF HIGHLY IMAGINATIVE FAMILIES

Art 2004, a celebration of the
visual arts in grades K – 12 in
New York City public schools,
at the Tweed Courthouse in
New York City.
Among the greatest gifts is delight. A young potter absolutely remembers when his
ceramic bowl was set in the middle of the Thanksgiving table, not out of kindness,
or usefulness, but out of awe. A painter carries with her the image of her father
standing before her painting in a museum, silently, joyously, crying. She says it
serves her like a passport into every new artistic territory she dares to enter. These
moments convince young people that what they say or make is heard—it has an
audience and an effect. Young artists and writers especially thrive on “informed”
delight—the kind that occurs when a mother or a grandfather tracks their work so
closely that they can detect small changes, new frontiers and even small forms of
mastery. To comment on a new glaze, or to ask about an image in a poem not only
signals intimacy and interest, it fuels the work. That single question practically
sings, “Yes, the choices are visible, the handiwork speaks, the message flows.”

Advocacy: Transforming the Odd

One of the neighbors complained because he was downstairs in the building
laundry room at 2 in the morning. I showed the manager the newspaper article
on his award. With the building name and address right there in it. So he
was so proud, he gave my son one of the storage rooms for a studio.

Young writers and artists rarely fit the mold. Far past midnight, they use the folding
table in the apartment laundry room to draw. A young man may prefer painting to
soccer. A girl’s report on horses may be narrated by a chestnut mare and be graded
as “off topic.” In a world that wants only laundry on the table and believes horses
whinny, rather than speak, young artists and writers need ambassadors and advo-
cates who can translate their passion and choices from “strange” to “miraculous.”

Left: Lauren Cunningham, Age 18, GA, Art Portfolio Silver Award recipient of 2005.
Lauren’s teacher Maggie Davis: “Lauren has shown incredible initiative in constructing
the installation piece When Is a Fork Not a Fork? She discovered that Wendy’s made
forks that melted the best, and she talked one manager at Wendy’s into giving her about
500 forks for her project.”
 Finding a Path on the Web
Below is a list of websites of organizations
Connection: Cutting a Path whose work supports the creative journey
of emerging artists and writers. The list is
not exhaustive but offers some first steps in
My grandma noticed that I drew a lot. When I turned eight she discovering resources for parents, students
gave me one of those huge boxes with paints, and markers, and and teachers via the Internet.
colored pencils in colors that never came in crayon boxes. She had Association of Independent Colleges of
to leave our neighborhood to go downtown to an art store. I used up Art and Design
www.aicad.org
everything, even the browns. When she saw that, she came up to
school to talk to the art teacher to find out where I could take art American Association of Museums
www.aam-us.org
lessons. She went with me the first year by bus. She took me to the
FIVE HABITS OF HIGHLY IMAGINATIVE FAMILIES

museum and the Latino Cultural Center. She showed me how you cut a path Americans for the Arts
www.artsusa.org
for what you want.
Arts Education Partnership
www.aep-arts.org
The adult world of art supply stores, museums and summer camps does not
come with a map. Young people have to learn to thread together what courses Association of Children’s Museums
www.childrensmuseums.org
and electives they choose in school, what they do in after-school programs and
how they spend their own free time, so that these choices become a pathway for their talents College Art Association
www.collegeart.org
and intentions. Particularly in a world where opportunities are unequally spread across richer
and poorer communities, it takes mothers, grandmothers, and others who “hurdle” the barriers, Education Commission of the States
www.ecs.org
track down scholarships and refuse to believe “the program is full,” to create a map with new
possibilities for a next generation. The J. Paul Getty Trust
www.getty.edu
Kennedy Center Alliance for Arts
Education Network
Respect: Leaving Well Enough Alone www.kennedy-center.org/education/kcaaen
The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation
This last habit is almost counterintuitive—it is about caring intensely by stepping back. In www.sharpeartfdn.org/summer1.htm
the simplest sense, leaving well enough alone means allowing a young person to spend
National Art Education Association
hours behind closed doors with charcoal, oil paint, or words on paper, without curious www.naea-reston.org
intrusions or nagging questions about how it’s going. But as this mother suggests, there is
National Association of State Arts Agencies
a second, deeper form of respect: www.nasaa-arts.org
The National Council of Teachers of English
Even when my son was little I made myself ask him “What’s it taste like?” not, www.ncte.org
“Sweet, isn’t it?” What he could see, or hear, or sense would be the raw materials of
National Foundation for Advancement
his imagination. He had to learn to be responsible for his own perceptions rather in the Arts
than swallowing the world ready-made. So I taught myself to ask questions and to www.artsawards.org
want his answers. National Association of
Secondary School Principals
www.nassp.org/s_nassp/index.asp
A list is not a life. These five habits practiced like exercises will not guarantee artistic children—
or your money back. Instead, the list acknowledges how caring adults—not all of them PTA
www.pta.org
blood relatives by any means—help to transform raw gifts into human artistry.
Red Studio, Museum of Modern Art
http://redstudio.moma.org
Dr. Dennie Palmer Wolf
Director, Opportunity and Accountability U.S. Department of Education
www.ed.gov
Annenberg Institute for School Reform
June 2005 VSA arts
www.vsarts.org
Special thanks to the following families who were interviewed by Dr. Wolf and who shared their stories:
Geoffrey and Sahiba Arend, parents of Flossie Arend; Felicia Boamah, mother of Leslie Boamah and Student award recipient participating in a Write It
Kofi Mintah, step-father of Leslie Boamah; Deanna Burney, parent; Alla Chesky, mother of Julia Chesky; www.scholastic.com/writeit
collaborative workshop at the national
Eric Scully, father of Rachel Sul-Jee Scully; Lea Wolf, daughter of Dr. Dennie Palmer Wolf. celebration events at Washington, DC, 2003. Young Audiences
www.youngaudiences.org