Why Art Matters

I recently spent 60,000 dollars, not to mention the last year (or past 10 depending on how you look at it) of my life on one question, why art matters? I have written more papers, read more research and spent more time discussing this very thing than just about anything else. During grad school I grew so weary of this question and the subsequent debates that were certain to erupt amongst my classmates when this question emerged I considered switching paths entirely and going to law school… After all there is no conflict in law school… I was baffled by how difficult it was to find consensus, even among artists on why or if art really mattered. I became frustrated when my peers who were some of the brightest and most talented individuals I have ever encountered would dissolve our classroom discussions into something akin to disgruntled PTA mothers arguing about the best way to go about the bake sale… My own beliefs and idealism would be swallowed completely some days. Regardless of the occasional discouragement, I believe art matters. I know art matters. With the exception of my faith, art is the single thing I believe has the greatest capacity for transforming the human condition. In a way art is how I would name my faith in the secular world. So for the 137^th time allow me to explain why art matters.

My first experience with what I would call “art therapy” came my senior year of high school. I adored a particular fellow and was elated to discover he was planning on asking me to prom. One afternoon this fellow came to visit me while I was sick… a consequence of riding on a roller coaster a time to many… (Turns out brain tumors and roller coasters don’t mix…a story for another day…) We talked for awhile and then he presented me with a quandary… he gave me the names of two girls whom he was considering asking to prom…neither of the names were mine… In a chain of subsequent comedic and painful events I was the only one of my friends that didn’t go to prom my senior year. It sounds absurd! It was absurd that at the time I was so deeply impacted by this. After all by this period of time I had already survived major surgery, been temporarily blind, and lost my working memory. Losing out on my dream date and watching Meet the Fockers on prom night with my family really shouldn’t have been a big deal…

Something beautiful emerged from my devastation. While my friends were dress shopping and deliberating about hairstyles I decided to channel all my energy into prepping for my IB Art show. I completed a year’s worth of work in two weeks! There was something about combining handsaws, spray paint and pseudo feminist themes that healed me. It was one of the first times I remember feeling as though I could carve out a space for myself. It wasn’t dramatic. However, it was poignant as it allowed me to recognize as long as I had the ability to carve out a space, as long as I had the ability to hear myself, as long as I had the ability to be a storyteller, and as long as I had the ability to know someone was listening it didn’t matter where else I fit.

As luck would have it my life continued to unfold in a way that felt incongruent to my peers. While they were choosing their majors or which study abroad to go on, I was choosing a treatment plan and being asked if I had a living will. As mentioned previously, while undergoing cancer treatment I was introduced to the Children’s Art Project http://www.childrensart.org. Art mattered for the pediatric oncology patients at MD Anderson hospital. Not only did their artwork serve as a means to work through trauma it also generated funding to support many children after them who would struggle with the disease.

After completing treatment I dedicated my time to researching the benefits of art therapy for pediatric treatment. The evidence was there. Northwestern conducted a study showing that engaging in arts improved and or eliminated all symptoms experienced by cancer patients with the exception of nausea. After learning this I became interested in the physiological impacts art had on all sorts of trauma. I began to work with youth in substance abuse treatment and youth between foster care placements. I marveled to see how the arts began to take shape in these settings.

If you ask an art educator why it matters you will repeatedly hear the same thing. Though the answers may be slightly nuanced based on the educator’s particular field the list will essentially look like this:

Art promotes creative thinking and problem solving.

Art helps cultivate individuality and self-reflection.

Art encourages civic participation.

Art incites change and revolution.

Art ties us to our humanity.

Art generates dialogue.

Art can be instrumental in coping with stress or trauma.

Art connects us to our past and helps us imagine a future.

Art is a successful tool for creating new neurological pathways in patients who have experienced traumatic brain injuries.

Art can improve learning a second language.

Art helps second language learners remember more of their native language even when predominantly speaking the second language.

Art improves memory and retaining information.

Arts integration deepens learning in other subject areas.

Art promotes increased high school retention and graduation rates.

Art cultivates empathy.

I could go on and on and provide several refutable sources backing each and every of the above listed claims. I have learned to recite this list as easily as I do my phone number.  Even so, I am not sure any one of them fully explains why art matters. Over the years I remember the absolute awe I experienced both living and researching the fruit of the arts. It is hard to distinguish when all these beautiful discoveries became something I recited as though it was an elevator speech.

Over the past couple months it has been my privilege to work with a young man who suffered from a significant brain injury as an infant. His working memory was extremely compromised and remains the thing he struggles with most 20 years later. This has been a serendipitous, lovely opportunity for me as I too once lost my working memory. Working memory is a funny thing because it is everything you store between your past and future. Your long-term memory allows you a permanent hard-wired recall, your short-term memory allows you to remember someone’s name five minutes after they tell you and your working memory is the gatekeeper between them. Your working memory is what gives you the opportunity to remember the beautiful passage read or insightful conversation the day after it happened. When you lose your working memory you almost feel as though you are stuck in the past or can only move toward an immediate present. If you were to evaluate an MRI scan of my brain, you would still observe damage to the region of my brain responsible for working memory. Yet somewhere in my brain I have been able to create a new memory. There is a neurological explanation I will seek to understand for the rest of my life but currently it isn’t really relevant. Understanding everything down to the synapses would be useful but not imperative. I could have chosen to be a neurologist. In fact many of my physicians have inquired why I didn’t pursue medicine after receiving my new miraculous lease on life? And just as I have considered law school when the questions get hard, I have likewise considered medicine. Nobody asks an Oncologist or Neurologist why his or her work matters. But at the end of the day I didn’t choose to be a doctor. I chose to be an artist.

As I have begun to consider how to help this young man restore or even recreate his working memory, I have doubted myself and wondered if I could read his MRI I would be more able to help him. A recent portraiture lesson silenced my doubt and reaffirmed my belief in the ever mystical and allusive art. He was assigned to do a contour portrait. He grew increasingly frustrated both with the principles of shading and what he felt was his inability to translate what he saw, to his hands, to the paper. Hoping to ease some of his anxiety I brought a dark eyeliner and highlighter pencil to our next meeting and asked him to create the light and dark spaces directly on his face. The next time we attempted to draw contour portraits he did so with ease. I marveled as he would periodically make various facial expressions, touch his face and then move the pencil across the paper.

Art matters because it has the ability to inhabit more than synaptic junctions. It matters because it has the ability to permeate our cells. It matters because it has the ability to permeate our hearts. It matters because it has the ability to permeate our spirits. Art is the ultimate storage unit. It allows us to store and retrieve our greatest hopes, wisdom, fears, and insights from the most obscure and seemingly inconsequential spaces. Our fingertips are not as easily deceived as our minds. 

Art mattered when I was an angst ridden high school student devastated by the loss of the perfect prom date, it mattered when I needed to work through the emotional roller coaster of cancer, it mattered when it gave me a purpose and direction after receiving news of my remission, it mattered when I watched it change the lives of the youth I worked with, it mattered in every paper I wrote or discussion I participated in while in grad school, it has always mattered. But the moment it mattered most was when I realized it gave me the incomparable gift of memory. Art has given me the ability to keep, remember and retrieve the things I find most precious. Art has not merely connected me with my humanity but more importantly with my divinity.