Current Issues Featured Artist for the Month of April 2008 is Helen M. Bascom.

My Life As An Artist

My mother was, among other things, an art teacher. I think I was holding a rattle in one hand and a paint brush in the other as soon as I was able to sit up on my own. I was a painter before I became a photographer. I still have a few works hanging in my home. Most were sold long ago. But my children all have some of my work. My official training as an artist began at age 5 with private lessons from my mother and another artist/school teacher Ms. Frankie Best.

I remember the first painting I sold. I was 18 years old (that was a long time ago) and I earned the enormous sum of $25 USD for a landscape. In addition to private art instruction throughout my life, I studied under Russell May for several years following graduation from high school.

In college, I was a student of Tom Whittaker who is known as The Greatest Appalachian Artist.

It was in the late 1980s that I discovered photography. I began to photograph landscape scenes that I wanted to paint. Soon I was doing photography more than I was painting.

BIRTH OF THE ACTIVIST ARTIST

I’ve always had a soft heart for the underdog and I have always held the First Amendment close to my heart. My first protest was in 1978. At the tender age of 17, I with the help of one other student, organized a mass walk out at my high school to protest the use of asbestos insulation in the school. I hand printed “protest flyers” on 4” x 6” index cards. I didn’t know how many would participate, or if anyone would participate. To my surprise, about 75% of the school got up from their seats and walked out to the designated area and took up their signs. The police came. Our parents were called. We were all suspended. But for the three days that we were suspended, we each showed up every morning as school started and stood across the street from the school, holding our little hand made signs to protest asbestos in our school. The news got involved covering our protest each day. The school board had no choice but to agree to investigate the asbestos issue. The next year the asbestos was removed from the school, and from every school in the district. From that moment, I was hooked on the power of the peaceful protest.

Then there was the time I hijacked the school public address system . . . But that’s another story.

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congratulations! im so happy!

congrats helen