Jennie’s Palette

Susan Johnson understands all that, even supports it, and has prohibited her son from taking his drawings to school. She just wishes everyone had taken a little more care in how they talked to her son about his drawings.

“I’m proud of them,” she said. “I can see where he erased and corrected. I can see how hard he worked to get them right.”

Last week, she got one of the drawings back whole and another ripped into about a dozen pieces, but two are still missing. Hatcher sounded indifferent.

“I was proud of the drawings until I got into trouble,” he said. “I didn’t really care about them after I got in trouble, and I haven’t really wanted to draw anything like that since.

[From adn.com | Alaska News : Mom says response to artwork too harsh]

Schools are beginning to go over the top with regards to nudes again. how quickly the lessons learned in the past fade and are forgotten. Hatcher, a 12 year old boy, was summoned to the principals office, in trouble for drawing from a how to draw book on Manga artwork. The female figures were among some of the easier tutorials to start and he had seen nudes in books and didn’t think there was anything wrong with his drawing them and proudly showing the works to his classmates. One girl was offended and tore up some of the drawings landing Hatcher with a 3 day suspension. The school considers it a discipline issue and has moved the art books to the reference session as well to mitigate the children viewing the nude artworks.

What really upsets me, however, is the quote above. he worked hard on these images and was proud of them. his mother was proud of them. and the school quashed his spirit and his interest in art through their overeagerness to prove that the human body is not a fitting subject. yet again they are reinforcing the notion that it’s wrong. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought them to school, but does that justify their right to stifle the creativity of another purely for their own motives?

The torn works have been handed back. the intact drawings are still confiscated, they do not know if they will be returned. The sad thing is that the images from which he was drawing look like they were wearing a bathing suit. the figures are poses without details- his certainly looks more like a figure than a nude- there are no offensive details, no pornographic images, just a small figure seated and rather well drawn. the only thing I find offensive is that this boy’s hard work has been torn up. what punishment did the girl get for destroying another person’s property and work?