This March, I am very excited to interview Rachel
Statford, a museum art educator at Utah's Springville Museum of Art!
How does the opportunity to work as a
museum art educator enrich your view of the world?
As a museum educator, I am asked to help bridge the gap between artwork and
viewer. In order to bridge that gap we ask questions that get the viewer to ask
more questions. We want to engage the viewer in the possible meanings of the
artwork and create opportunities for a personal connection. I have found that
as I think of and ask these questions, I learn so much from both the works and
the patrons. This, in turn, affects my worldview. My eyes are not only opened
to the life experiences of others, but also to the additional depth of meaning
that can be found in artworks.
What have you learned about the
creative process from studying other artists?
I have learned that it can be different for each artist. The Springville
Museum of Art, where I work, has the pleasure of working with many living Utah
artists. Opportunities to interact with them and visit some of their studios
have taught me that they are all so different and that they work very
differently. Some will do countless studies before heading to the final canvas,
while others will jump right in.
What can art can teach humanity about
itself?
To never give up. When people have a powerful aesthetic experience with an
artwork they see in a museum or gallery, they often feel that the artist that
created the work must be insanely talented or a genius of some kind. But what
they often don’t think about are the years of hard work, entering shows and
getting rejected, and scraping by until a painting sells. Somewhere in all
that, there are moments of pure magic where things come together and a
masterpiece is made. This is not to say that all artists or musicians or
writers will achieve that, but that the kind of art that takes our breath away
was not made without persistence. Imagine a world without those masterworks. It
would be, at best, mediocre. And all because people had given up on themselves.
If you could ask any artist in
history to paint your portrait, who would it be and why?
I have to confess this was the first question I wanted to answer, but I saved
it for last like one waits to cherish a good dessert. I would ask
Jessie Wilcox Smith to paint me. My mother introduced me to her work has she has been our
favorite for years. I am drawn to the way she uses line, to her often golden
light, and the gentle way that she depicts women. I would love to be her
subject because I feel she would depict me as I see myself (on a good day):
graceful, caring, and beautiful in my own way.
