At this point in our history, educational priorities are focused on STEM: science, technology, engineering and math. This is a lopsided view of values in education. We need to encourage our school districts and educators to prioritize STEAM: science, technology, engineering, ART and math.

This week in the Garden of Fire, students visited The Rockwell Museum to learn about Native American pottery. They worked with 171 Cedar Arts Center instructors to create and decorate their own coil pot. Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher photography, 2017.

This week in the Garden of Fire, students visited The Rockwell Museum to learn about Native American pottery. They worked with 171 Cedar Arts Center instructors to create and decorate their own coil pot. Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher photography, 2017.

This week in the Garden of Fire, students visited The Rockwell Museum to learn about Native American pottery. They worked with 171 Cedar Arts Center instructors to create and decorate their own coil pot. Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher photography, 2017.

This week in the Garden of Fire, students visited The Rockwell Museum to learn about Native American pottery. They worked with 171 Cedar Arts Center instructors to create and decorate their own coil pot. Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher photography, 2017.

This week in the Garden of Fire, students visited The Rockwell Museum to learn about Native American pottery. They worked with 171 Cedar Arts Center instructors to create and decorate their own coil pot. Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher photography, 2017.

This week in the Garden of Fire, students visited The Rockwell Museum to learn about Native American pottery. They worked with 171 Cedar Arts Center instructors to create and decorate their own coil pot. Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher photography, 2017.

This week in the Garden of Fire, students visited The Rockwell Museum to learn about Native American pottery. They worked with 171 Cedar Arts Center instructors to create and decorate their own coil pot. Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher photography, 2017.

This week in the Garden of Fire, students visited The Rockwell Museum to learn about Native American pottery. They worked with 171 Cedar Arts Center instructors to create and decorate their own coil pot. Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher photography, 2017.

This week in the Garden of Fire, students visited The Rockwell Museum to learn about Native American pottery. They worked with 171 Cedar Arts Center instructors to create and decorate their own coil pot. Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher photography, 2017.

Artwork is the application of many of these other areas of education. Artists deal with physics and chemistry because they work with materials that have specific properties and limits. They deal with mathematics as they confront geometry, measurements and mechanics. Technology and engineering are utilized as they are in every other arena of production – the thing produced must work! It must be stable and function.

Artwork has been devalued as impractical. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yet, at the same time, artwork is creative.  It can be fanciful. This should not be used to denigrate art, but rather to reveal what it has to offer to other disciplines. Engineers and scientists must be creative. They must be inventive. Like artists, they must explore the boundaries of what has already been done to see what might be done.

This week in the Garden of Fire, students visited The Rockwell Museum to learn about Native American pottery. They worked with 171 Cedar Arts Center instructors to create and decorate their own coil pot. Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher photography, 2017.

This week in the Garden of Fire, students visited The Rockwell Museum to learn about Native American pottery. They worked with 171 Cedar Arts Center instructors to create and decorate their own coil pot. Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher photography, 2017.

This week in the Garden of Fire, students visited The Rockwell Museum to learn about Native American pottery. They worked with 171 Cedar Arts Center instructors to create and decorate their own coil pot. Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher photography, 2017.

This week in the Garden of Fire, students visited The Rockwell Museum to learn about Native American pottery. They worked with 171 Cedar Arts Center instructors to create and decorate their own coil pot. Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher photography, 2017.

This week in the Garden of Fire, students visited The Rockwell Museum to learn about Native American pottery. They worked with 171 Cedar Arts Center instructors to create and decorate their own coil pot. Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher photography, 2017.

This week in the Garden of Fire, students visited The Rockwell Museum to learn about Native American pottery. They worked with 171 Cedar Arts Center instructors to create and decorate their own coil pot. Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher photography, 2017.

This week in the Garden of Fire, students visited The Rockwell Museum to learn about Native American pottery. They worked with 171 Cedar Arts Center instructors to create and decorate their own coil pot. Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher photography, 2017.

This week in the Garden of Fire, students visited The Rockwell Museum to learn about Native American pottery. They worked with 171 Cedar Arts Center instructors to create and decorate their own coil pot. Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher photography, 2017.

This week in the Garden of Fire, students visited The Rockwell Museum to learn about Native American pottery. They worked with 171 Cedar Arts Center instructors to create and decorate their own coil pot. Images courtesy of Dan Gallagher photography, 2017.

Education must encourage creativity in all its forms. This will help our children build a world that can address unforeseen challenges including repercussions from climate change, population pressures and changing social, political, and environmental situations. Now, more than ever, we need our artists to give us the vision – a practical vision – for the future.

The students involved in the Garden of Fire are not worried about any of this. They are simply learning and having fun. It is our job to think about this on their behalf.

Connie Sullivan-Blum
Executive Director of The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes