Tribute to an Art Teacher

Tribute to an Art teacher

There are some teachers who leave an impression that one may not notice until one is mature enough to know the difference.  Mr.  Anthony Cardoso was such a teacher for me. 

What made Mr. Cardoso unique was the love that he demonstrated for art. Without a lot of fanfare or boasting,  he made it obvious that he was in love with the topic that he was about to demonstrate to his class.  His hands would move pastels, or water colors around on paper or arrange wood blocks in ways that seemed to be magical.  Art could be linear and be spun with yarn and wrapped around nails or could be fluid and translucent through the use of paint on glass surfaces. Clay became a material that contained an essence of something that needed to be born. The ordinary became extraordinary in our classroom experiences with him. He taught us to see our world joyfully with new eyes.

In his classes throughout high school,  he taught me important lessons that would serve me well later in my own experience as a designer and design educator. 

He taught me to self criticize my work but to also appreciate the process that led me to the work as well. It was easy to love his class because it was the one period in my day where I could experiment and dream.  He made it a safe zone for making mistakes and moving on.  It was a place where the process had value as much as the end result.  In his room, it was ok to be messy and playful. In fact, the messier and the more mistakes I made the better the outcome may be. 

He taught me to have a discerning eye for design, to look for order, pattern and shape; to see wholeness and to appreciate details. Both bigness and smallness have their place in good art.

He opened my awareness to beauty that can be expressed through materials, through combinations of materials, through ordinary elements. He showed me how to trust my instincts.

He  taught me to see that being creative involved as much serious work as  did serendipity and fun.  Creativity involved using both sides of the brain: the logical and the irrational.  Together mystical things can happen and I had the power to make it happen. He taught me to love art, to live art, and to imagine myself as a person who enabled beauty to exist in the world.

He moved through the class smiling and stopping at our table. He had a way of being gentle yet in prodding ways he would help us examine our work. He gave us confidence in our ability to recognize when to stop and what needed more work.

The highlight for me was painting murals throughout the Tampa Bay community. His serene presence in the background, we became his apprentices in the realm of public art.  He helped us understand the power that art has as a communication tool.  Without the use of text, well composed images can captivate and can send messages in significant ways.

As his art students we learned to be co creators with him in our community.  He would allow us some artistic control over pieces that would mark our existence in our neighborhoods.  It affirmed that as artists we could leave something valuable for others.  

In my 20 years teaching, he came to mind often.  Little did I know then as a high school student how important to me his teaching style would be. He  demonstrated how to teach from the heart as well as the mind. The most important thing a teacher can give to a student is to be so in love with their subject that it shows in everything they bring to their lessons.  That is what Mr. Cardoso did.  He taught many of us to love art, to be inspired by art, and to want to share that love with others.

Years later, talk about serendipity; his grandson Justin and my daughter Cristina would meet, begin dating and fall in love. I had not seen Mr. Cardoso since my high school years. One of the first family gatherings we had in our home before the kids married, I shared with him how important our classroom experiences had been to me.  I pulled out an old faded picture of one the art pieces that we had the painted as a class. It had been a huge mural on the outside of the Humane Society building. We shared some laughs; he vaguely remembered this event even though in my mind it had been a monumental moment in my career as an "artist". I will always recall that Saturday spring morning when we art students and mentor gathered and began to lay out the work on the huge vertical plane.  It seemed so overwhelming. Yet his calm and confident presence guided us throughout the day. He helped us mix colors, he fine tuned our work. For many years afterwards, I would drive by that building and smile at that "masterpiece" courtesy of bunch of high school kids and one amazing and dedicated teacher who believed in our ability to make art appear on the outside of a very plain old surface.  Retelling him that story, it did not surprise me that he shrugged off the appreciation and  compliments that I tried to give him for giving us such incredible learning experiences.

Mr. Cardoso has left an big impression in the lives of many students who were privileged to have had him. He also has left a wonderful legacy in Tampa with his murals and sculptures that adorn galleries and parks, each one capturing  the beautiful essence of being alive and being human. He touched my heart as an artist and because of him it has made a big difference in my life and in my family.