The following is excerpted from Robert Markert's keynote address on apprenticeship to the SGAA Conference last summer in Charlotte.
Greeting & good evening, fellow SGAA members and guests.
It was an unexpected honor to be asked to give this keynote address, and when Katei Gross, Christopher Haynes and our president Andy Young gave me the challenge of the subject for this talk, I wasn't just honored, I was totally intimidated.
The main reason for my talking on this topic is to focus on and highlight a sense of where the SGAA is presently with apprenticeship in general, and to look at some of the challenges and the promise for our future involved in recruiting interested young minds and hands into our craft.
We are gathered here tonight to celebrate the mutual love affair we all have with light: its sensitivity, its mystery, its power. We all are aware of how deeply into our psyche and our souls this gift of God is that challenges us to work with it, create with it, joy in it. We are people of light who use glass to transform not just the light itself, but our very selves and our world, as small as that world sometimes is. We know the power of this passion -- how it can be painful as well enriching. We know the seductive call of our craft: a wheel singing on glass, the satisfaction of harmonies of color, shape, size and texture awakened by light.
Most of us, I'm sure, have been lucky enough to experience, because of our art and craft, the very surprise of God. We all share the dream that the next commission, the next job, will be the one that helps define us and makes us whole. Andy Young said it beautifully when he said Thursday night: "Stained glass has the power to render unspeakable truth in visible form."
We all live with mystery... always searching for the light, aren't we? I'm searching for some of that here tonight among you who are light seekers as well. I welcome that. I especially welcome dialogue at the end of my remarks since I see myself as a stimulator -- possibly even as an instigator -- of ideas. (My wife Patsy says instigator means I am annoying.)
I certainly am no expert in any of it. As I stand here and look out at you I see the wealth of experience, knowledge and creativity that are seated before me. We would be wise to begin mining that knowledge and experience tonight and in the months to come. That's why I ask you to humor me in something I'd like to try when I finish my remarks. I will ask everyone at each of your tables to take a few minutes to process something that you've heard and then join whatever dialogue we can share about this issue of youth and their involvement with the future of glass.
In preparation for this address, I read from as many different sources as possible, looking for some sense of history of apprenticeship in the SGAA. It has obviously been an on-again, off-again world. In the articles in The Stained Glass Quarterly, Helene Weis's name kept surfacing. She is certainly the one who is better suited than I to talk about the history, trends, movements and reality of apprenticeship in our organization.
I started with the SGAA's Apprenticeship and Training Standards for the Glass Craft. In the Foreward it states: "Our youth must be given an opportunity to acquire the broad skills and training that will equip them to assume their responsibilities to themselves and their families as wage earners, to their employers as competent workers and to their respective communities as good citizens."
That's pretty broad and very general and a wonderful ideal to pursue. The Standards go on in the rest of the document to flesh out those bare bones, but they don't necessarily fit the contours of today's labor and business reality. The Foreward goes on to state the need: for continuous training to maintain the high levels of skill and competence demanded of this craft; to provide adequate numbers of skilled workers; to insure public satisfaction; to provide for growth and advancement (of the new craftsperson).
This all seems well and good, and deeply felt when it was written, but we haven't had an Apprentice Competition since the early 1980s. The Biennial Apprentice Competition held at summer meetings from earlier days to the end of the '70s was a way to showcase the art and the skill of young studio apprentices. It was a competition mounted much like the Jewels of Light competition at this Charlotte Conference. It had to be cancelled in 1982 because of lack of entries for the Summer Conference. We lost our formal apprentices.
In The Stained Glass Quarterly winter issue 1982-83, Helene Weis wrote an insightful article titled "Apprenticeship Problems and Prospects." Part of that article talked about the fact that a survey of SGAA members had been sent out. Of 625 questionnaires mailed, only 74 responses were returned, of which only 20 replied that they had or would like to have apprentices. My own Fenestra Studio was one of them; I don't know who any of the 19 nineteen were.
Any wonder why our Apprenticeship and Training Committee hasn't been too active? Apprentice recruitment is a problem, and not just with our glass craft. Apprenticeship and drawing young people into other trades as well seem to be a difficulty nationally. It's part of the fabric of our culture and a changed world view and experience of more than just our youth. This is a different world from 1965, or even '85. Hot Glass seems to be generating a lot of interest and enthusiasm in the public and especially in the young in recent years because it seems to have a sense of mystery and excitement, calls attention to itself very energetically, and is now becoming the new thing to offer in a lot of college and university curricula.
Hot Glass shops all over the country seem to have caught on. Leaded and stained glass doesn't seem to have that same aura or appeal at present. Were not hot! Bad pun intended.
But our trade and craft can and does have that appeal when we find ways of introducing it to people, especially the young, in more intimate and personal ways and programs. It is up to us to be creative in finding ways to excite a whole new generation of artists and craftspeople in what it is that we do for our world... creating a unique environment of lasting beauty within the buildings in which we live, work and pray. Our skill and imagination touch millions of people every day and helps shape their thoughts, attitudes and views about this world we live in. It is that sense of poetry, mystery, openness to new growth and energy, and the importance and value of meaningful work that can so capture the imagination and interest of young people needing to make a difference in their world.
That concept of the latent and inherent sense of art, of beauty, the need for meaning and value, the untapped energy and enthusiasm of youth are all available to us. Our children come to us with a new point of view, not a lot of lived experience, but they aren't afraid of anything. They try and challenge us and aren't always satisfied with our old answers. What might we do?
We need only broaden some of our definitions, alter some of our attitudes, and rethink some of our concepts about our youth and the vision of our own future as an organization and as a craft. We are challenged to allow a new image of the future to unfold. That involves a lot of work and trust. With little happening across the country in our industry in this whole area of apprenticeship and the problems inherent in the recruitment of new blood, maybe we should redefine the word youth to increase the pool of potential artisans. Maybe we need to mine the potential of small studios and help them reach out to youth with an interest and affinity to art and working with their hands. We can't even imagine the growth and potential that surround us.
I think my involvement with Studio2000 over the last five years is the main reason I've been asked to share my thoughts with you. Studio2000 is an employer of youth in the arts program and is part of the Office of Youth Development of Metro Government in Louisville, Ky. I've been the director of Studio2000 for the last five years and was hired to take the program from a part-time one to a full-year program of employment for youth in the arts. Their ages run from 14 years old to as old as 19 years.
It was initially begun the summer of 2000 as a summer program for hiring high school-aged kids to make art under the supervision of skilled teaching artists in various media. Minimum wage was paid to all the kids, except for a Senior Apprentice in each media and two junior apprentices in each media. The Senior and Junior artists had more responsibilities within the media and were chosen because of their leadership and the skill they exhibited in the art discipline in which they work. Each media is run by a Master Artist and an Assistant Artist, both of whom work as self-employed artists under contract with the city.
The apprentices themselves are temporary part-time employees of the City of Louisville and have to comply with all City employee policies in hiring and employment practices. Discipline has rarely been a problem. They were hired... they can be fired.
Because of this program and others like it around the country, young people who would not have graduated from high school without this kind of experience and encouragement are now actively enrolled in colleges and universities and find themselves in a new reality. Mayor Jerry Abramson says, "One of the keys to building a stronger community is providing opportunities to actively engage young people in enriching learning experiences."
That is just as true when you replace the word "community" with "the SGAA." That closely resembles the statement about youth in the Apprenticeship Standards of the SGAA. He says, "It is based on providing youth with meaningful employment and training through the arts. It promotes excitement, ideas, a vision, a process and a unique outcome."
I know that is true because I have lived it for the last five years and could tell story after story of the creative and life-giving value that this kind of training and discipline can offer not just to the young employee but to the employer as well. Mayor Abramson goes on to say, "We know that natural gifts come to life through discipline, guidance and support from their colleagues and the community." Again use "SGAA" instead of "community," and the meaning does not change.
"Hands-on training and support are vital when one has the desire to achieve." That's true of all of us no matter our age.
His last sentence tells us, "We believe the young people of our community hold the promise for tomorrow."
Need I say more?
I know there are ideas, questions and responses that have occurred while I've been talking, or at least I hope so, but I have a series of questions to pose to you that I feel can be answered not just by myself, but by the shared wisdom and experience of those here and our other members who weren't able to be here. I do have responses and hopefully insights to share, but I'd prefer to do so in dialogue with you. Here are my questions:
- How do we go about getting young students involved?
- Why get young students involved?
- How can studios work with their own municipal government to get more programs like Studio2000 started?
- How can we in the SGAA inspire and encourage one another to include young people in studios again, as used to be the practice?
Old, nagging challenges (and by that I don't mean some of us with old nagging aches) can be a necessary stimulant to solve those problems with new concepts and dreams.
Certificates of Competence might need to be rethought.
Mentoring relationships might replace the older Journeyman to Apprentice feudal relationship.
The basic fear of creating a future competitor needs to discussed and reflected on.
Being open to the unexpected surprises of creativity, ideas and techniques filtered through the no-stop brain workings of an adolescent can be a frightening trip. But, oh my! The value of the journey!
Our trade -- our craft -- has been a blessing to us, individually as well as collectively. I feel that it also has been a blessing to our communities and our nation because we are in the business of making this world more beautiful than it was before we caught this virus called glass which strikes us to our very hearts.
I know the value that we are. I want us to find a way to instill that value in the young in our communities. Just as we attempt to produce work of beauty, of spirituality, of hope and fidelity, we can as well produce that in others.
That endeavor will carry us into the future, and, in that future we shall continue to be people of light captivated by glass.
Thank you, for this honor to address you. Dialogue anyone?
[Letters on this topic are welcome. The Stained Glass Quarterly, 10009 East 62nd Street, Raytown, MO 64133. A special Apprenticeship forum is also being created online for this topic; visit
www.stainedglass.org for more information.]
