Shaping how students see the world with sculpture

At age 84, Holly Silverthorne still lives the kind of creative life she pursued as a student in her 20s, living what she mockingly calls the “rebell" outlook encouraged at Bennington College.  She was earning a degree then in sculpture, no doubt working with the same energy and enthusiasm she expressed on a recent day, as she prepared for three upcoming shows.  

When she's not working at a room at the Barclay Friends, her residence in West Chester, she works in “her corner,” a place at CCAA especially reserved for her. Having taught at CCAA since 1989, Holly concedes that she needs the extra space.  She works surrounded by patined figures, busts small and large.  With the exception of  a cainine sculpture that perfectly captures the rapt expression of a leaping dog (sans a Frisbee) the pieces are all of the human form, many of them completed at CCAA  in  life classes ("that means nude," Holly observed.)  They were as diverse as people at any public gathering, their expressions unselfconscous  and deep in thought. “I try to capture the personality of the person,” Holly said by way of an explaination.

Holly may have a robust personality, but after a short talk about her decades of teaching, it’s easy to conclude that her art has shaped her life, and creating sculpture is a two-way process. Sometimes it's a matter of showing how  it takes determination to learn to how to trust your instincts, Holly says.
 In her class devoted to the classicial, or adademic work, students are encouraged to capture the likeness of the model.  But that doesn't mean Holly does not encourage creatively or abstract work. She finds that representational work is best done in her classes where students render in clay using an armature while students working in stone can work in more of a free-form way, following a stone's “veining,” for instance,  to create abstract works.Either way, Holly has seen what sculpture demands of a person. “I have adults who run companies, but they come in here and they’re scared to death.”  

  "Maybe their second-grade teacher put them down.... They haven't learned to trust their instincts or what they see visually," she said,"Typically they say `I can't draw a straight line," and [I say], who wants to draw a straight line?"

 A master of setting people at ease, Holly tends to teach by indirection, letting her students reveal  what they know emotionally or intutively, but also what they don't know about the medium.  With the latter, the student may need to learn how to handle the tools of carving,  for instance, "or the discipline of looking at a model, or putting up  armature," Holly said.  “Everytime we have a  new model, we draw.” “That’s the way to see where people are,” Holly said.  Her teaching approach also includes field trips in which students can see for themselves the techniques of an architectural restorationist or how a foundry operates  (to name two recent trips).  

With more advanced students, Holly challenges them to go beyond what they see. In-class critique sessions help in that process by training students to speak openly about their likes and dislikes.  Too often, Holly says, people are unsure of their tastes – a certain obstacle when it comes to creating art.  "I believe there is an objective standard of excellence, which applies to whether it's good art or not so good," she said,"It's not so much about personal experiences as it is about getting to the point where you know something is good. There's a developmental skill involved."  

Taking up the subject of the model and the qualities she seeks, Holly seems to echo her own feelings about her art – and her students.  "The ones who throw themselves into it, tend to be the good ones," she said.