The art of the personality and the pandemic.
If you know Sam Brunett, you’ll also know he’s nothing like Bob Ross.
Save for the brotherhood of the brush and canvas.
The late Ross ruled public television in the 1980s and 90s as the star of “The Story of Painting,” the art instruction series where he crafted an original work every episode.
The soft-spoken Ross delighted to “happy little clouds,” while displaying an almost Zen calmness about the whole business of scale, perspective and shading.
Mountain vistas and seascapes made him famous.
He lives on, via YouTube and streaming.
Brunett, meanwhile, owns art instruction at Morgantown High School, where he’s taught for years.
He’s boisterous, and given to whoops of encouragement in class, as he draws on inspiration from the Grand Masters to Marvel comics during his instruction.
His enthusiasm and teaching prowess make him famous. He’s a past West Virginia Art Educator of the Year winner.
Oh, yeah: He’s on YouTube, also.
The COVID-19 outbreak carbonated his art major-synapses in unprecedented ways.
He didn’t want to lose the muse to his quarantined students.
So he began connecting the streaming electron dots to Ross, his not-so symmetrical brother.
“I actually taught myself how to shoot and edit my own instructional videos,” he said.
His entries so far include a couple on sculpting techniques.
Another is on the rudiments of animation.
Other colleagues in art education found themselves going the Ross-route as well, Brunett said.
“We’ve all had to do things differently.”
Lessons, in logistics
Which, said Eddie Campbell Jr., Monongalia County’s superintendent of schools, could just as well be the artist’s signature on the portrait that is the pandemic.
Campbell is eagerly awaiting the benchmark study on COVID-19 and classes the West Virginia Department of Education is releasing next week.
Mon’s first day of school for the coming year is Aug. 22.
The superintendent is hopeful students will actually be in the buildings.
Even if they are wearing masks and maintaining a social distance.
There are some corona-caveats, he said, the biggest one being whether or not that feared surge in newly diagnosed cases will happen, as communities continue to reopen.
“We’re going to have to watch those numbers,” he said.
“We’re going to have to do everything to keep our kids and our staffers safe.”
Which is just as hard as it sounds, he said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent out some tall homework with its list of COVID-19 guidelines for schools last week.
“Prevention,” is the watch-word, Campbell said.
But West Virginia’s school districts, his included, also have to be pragmatic, he said.
“As good and measured and as common-sense as they are, some of these suggested guidelines are going to really be tough to pull off for a district our size.”
Mon Schools just finished this year with some 11,000 students in its system.
Keeping students wearing masks, especially in the younger grades, will take ever-vigilant bird-dogging.
Same for social distancing, since Mon’s school buildings, like Mon’s students, come in all shapes and sizes.
The CDC’s school bus statute, Campbell said, could leave lots of students in the lurch, while spiking operating costs.
Only 10 to 11 students would be allowed on a bus to and from, according to the statute.
“That’s a logistical challenge to everybody,” Campbell said.
The state report is scheduled to be released June 8.
After that, Campbell said he’ll begin meeting with the school board here to grid out the coming year.
It will be a process of imaging and re-imaging, he said.
Clouds and other
things up in the air
Brunett said his classroom, which is also a de facto studio and gallery, will have to be re-imagined, as well.
Art class, he says, is “a communal thing” — with shared brushes, ink and paint.
And students leaning in really close to one another as they consider the art of the assignment.
“We’re gonna have to be less communal in my classes,” he said, “if we even get to go back at all.”
That might mean issuing individual packets of art supplies which would never leave a student’s side, he said.
Which, the teacher adds, is decidedly less germy than, “Hey, let me have that when you’re done with it, will ya?”
YouTube might continue to be part of the vision.
Does that mean happy little clouds after all?
“Probably not,” Brunett said, laughing.
“I’m not as good as Bob Ross. But I did get into doing those videos.”
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Morgantown Area News
'Sunday, November 17, 2024'
