Words from the President, Brian D. Cohen
To Students:
I‘ve spent the better part of two days meeting you and watching you welcome each other with kindness and excitement. I share all of your excitement for the start of the year. It’s especially exciting for me, as this is my first year at Idyllwild Arts.
I’m very happy to have found this place, and I’m lucky to be here. I am joined by Holiday, my wife and a counselor here at Idyllwild Arts, and our son David, 8, in fourth grade. My background is in visual arts, painting and printmaking. When I was 14, I fell in love with drawing, and I have never seriously entertained the idea of doing anything other than art with my life. Idyllwild Arts Academy didn’t yet exist; it would have been the perfect place for me, but better late than never. I have taught Art at The Putney School, a boarding school in Vermont, for 26 years.
I would like to talk a bit about what you’re doing here. This is something you know well enough already, but please bear with me for a moment.
My favorite definition of education comes from its root, meaning “to draw forth from within.” This definition implies that learning brings something out from you, rather than stuffing something in you (it may seem strange that your parents pay for something you in a sense already posses, but don’t think about that too much). The content of your education may be at first new and unfamiliar, but you rise to meet it, you engage it, respond to it, embrace it, resonate with it, or even fight with it – you transform it, in words, numbers, paint, movement -- and you are at the same time changed. It’s up to you what you make of it.
Creative possibilities are everywhere, in every subject, every decision, and every relationship. It’s about patterns, relationships, connections, searching, discovery, beauty. The answers are not in the back of the book.
I studiously avoid using the word “talent,” or “gifted,” or “smart” not because you don’t all possess those qualities, but because they don’t say anything about what you will do that you couldn’t do before, what you will see as newly possible, what ideas, images, and expression you will create. And that’s what I’m most curious about.
It will take me a while, but I want to know you, and I always want to see what you’re doing. Please show me.
I will make a promise to get to know all your names before the end of the month. Feel free to challenge me before then, but after September 30 the test counts. I’d like you to do the same – take more than a month – but make an effort to know people outside of your dorm, your major, and your native language.
You also know why you’re here. In your words, quoted from this year’s application essays:
“IAA presents an opportunity for me to add to IAA’s diversity and become inspired by the diversity of my teachers and peers. Perhaps one day, I can be an inspiration to the teachers and peers that inspired me."
“It was in kindergarten that I took my first trip to IAA. At the end of this trip, I was sure that it was the high school I wanted to go to. This opinion has stayed with me for 9 years and now that I am moving on to high school, I would like nothing more than to attend IAA.”
“So, why do I want to attend IAA? Because, really, I want to make the final jump from the person I want to be to the person I will become; both in the rest of my education and the rest of my life.”
“My current school makes fun of me for being an artist. I can’t wait to live with kids as passionate about art as I am.”
“I am looking forward to being challenged artistically as well as academically.”
“I want to surround my life with art.”
“I want to dress in a way that expresses myself, be in an environment where I will not get punished for being too fun. I love to draw, build and create. I can vividly picture objects in my head and put them down on paper. Art is what I want to do in life.”
I would be remiss not to mention that today is the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. While you may have your own memories and responses to that day, I think we can all agree that the world has become a closer though more difficult place, and that learning to live together, to accept and value each other is more important than ever. We have the chance to do that here.
We represent 20 different countries and 26 states.
37 dance majors
30 film majors
23 IM majors
76 music majors
52 theater majors
63 visual arts majors
14 creative writing majors
and –
52 freshmen
79 sophomores
94 juniors
67 seniors
3 post-grads
…for a grand total of 295 students
We are somewhere very special, distinctive, and fascinating -- you know that -- and we are at the beginning of a great year.
Brian D. Cohen
September 11, 2011