Lots of Ways to Learn by Mary Erickson, Ph.D., with Arizona art teacher Kathy David in conjunction with the exhibition at Tempe Center for the Arts

Have you ever seen someone do something amazing and wished you could do it? Sometimes talented people make what they do look easy. Animator Chuck Jones worked long and hard to develop his skills. 1974: Chuck Jones working on layout drawings for an animated movie version of Rudyard Kipling’s “White Seal.”

Schools are traditional places where people go to develop their skills. Kyrene de la Mariposa Elementary SchoolTempe High School

People of all ages find lots of ways to learn. Learning directly from the world.Learning from someone older.

These high school students are learning from a professional video artist, a sculptor/teacher and from each other.

Adults also continue to learn throughout their lives. Arizona State University wood sculpture student learning to use a saw. Watercolor students and teacher learning watercolor painting at Pyle Adult Recreational Center.

Lisa Chow is a dancer, director, manager, choreographer and educator at Desert Dance Theatre.

As a little girl Lisa loved to watch her older sisters and the other “big kids” dance. By the age of five she was dancing and singing in her backyard. Lisa also learned to dance at parties and watching old movies. She even learned choreography from cartoons such as Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny.

Lisa studied dance at college where she learned from dancers like Martha Graham. She says she is always learning from other dancers. She says, “Dancing is hard work…your body has to memorize the dance.”

Kara Osburn is a singer for Reliquary, a rock and roll band, which has traveled all over the United States and to Germany.

Kara has been performing as long as she can remember. Her mother says she would stand on the coffee table and serenade people. She had an excellent choir teacher in high school and sang at church.

Kara studied voice performance at Arizona State University. She loved learning about how to use her voice as an instrument and how to exercise her singing muscles. She says the Internet is a great place to learn about other bands to find out “who is doing what.”

John Kane is one of the architects who designed the Tempe Center for the Arts. He studied architecture in high school, at a community college and at Arizona State University. John says, “Everything has something to teach you if your eyes are open.”

He learned about the power of scale while backpacking in the mountains with his father. At the age of 12, he visited Chicago and saw the “landscape of huge buildings” and knew he wanted to be an architect.

Visiting buildings by other architects taught John that every site is different. He continues to learn from other architects, books and from the world around him. Paulo Soleri’s Arcosante on the edge of a canyon north of Phoenix. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West in the desert near Phoenix.

Chuck Jones was the animator and director of more than 300 cartoons including Looney Tunes cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd. He created characters including Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner and Marvin Martian. During his life he won three Academy Awards.

Chuck began to draw at the age of three, with his mother’s encouragement and lots of stationery left over from his father’s unsuccessful business ventures. Later, when he went to art school, his teacher told his class that everyone would make at least 100,000 bad drawings. Chuck was not worried. He knew he’d already made 200,000.

There was no TV when Chuck was a child. He listened to the radio and records. He loved classical music. Some of his best cartoons were inspired and accompanied by classical music, such as What’s Opera, Doc? Chuck said, “Life is always feeding you opportunities.” As a kid, Chuck sneaked onto Charlie Chaplin’s silent movie set and watched him shoot scenes again and again. He said it was boring to watch, but later he understood the dedication it took to get something right.

Chuck was a reader all his life. When he was seven he read Mark Twain’s book about his travels in the West, called Roughing It. He liked Twain’s description of a coyote as “a skeleton with wolf skin pulled over it.” Many years later, Chuck visited Arizona where he saw real coyotes and roadrunners. Later he drew Wile E. Coyote based on his own experiences and his memory of Twain’s description. © Chuck Jones Enterprises and Looney Tunes TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.

Chuck Jones never stopped learning. Even after his cartoons were famous around the world, he took life drawing classes for 40 years. He also taught others by lecturing at universities around the country. Today, the mission of the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity is to inspire creativity in people of all ages, especially children, by using Chuck Jones’ work.

Special thanks to the following: Lisa Chow, Kara Osburn, John Kane & the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity. Jones cartoons, photos and drawings courtesy of: © Chuck Jones Enterprises and Looney Tunes TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.