The Malcolm X School Garden Spiders

As an artist who has spent most of his life trying to figure out what art is, I can only look at these drawings by young students from the Malcolm X school in Berkeley, California with much more than just a little envy. Line, meaningful color, perfect gesture, and unmistakeable honesty of purpose, it is all there exactly where it needs to be. Adults who have long forgotten what it is to really see sometimes call it scribbling. If only I could scribble this well, I would forever forget, happily, about trying to be an artist.

- Mark Bulwinkle, 2010, Oakland, California -