This is the arts page. You should read it this year. Not because I’m its editor or the writing here in this column, week to week, will wow you and you’ll wonder at its wit and whimsy—though that would be nice. Read the arts section because you’re at Hillsdale, in a community of amazingly creative people doing amazingly creative things everyday.
Art, as your first philosophy professor or an old dictionary will tell you, is the application of skill, of knowledge. To describe something as art, classically, implies a rational mind has applied itself to the design and crafting of it. That’s a broad definition, growing out of the Greek word transliterated as “techne,” whose numerous derivatives require no aid in recalling. But the idea of it, that creative and skilful basket-term use of the word art, catches almost all we do here at Hillsdale. Pursue truth, defend liberty, get a liberal arts education.
Obviously, however, art as it is used today, while cherishing its roots in techne—trying playing a violin without practicing and without making the neighbor’s cat wonder if its cousin is dying—describes aesthetic endeavors, exploring beauty, whether for its own sake or in conjunction with other human activity. These are the fine arts. In the collegiate cosmos they are circling spheres of music, of theatre, of dance, of even more rigidly defined fine arts—sculpture, painting, drawing, photography, myriad medium, message, and method. Cast out poetry and creative prose from the English major’s sill and he wanders homeless and hardly recognized among his fine arts brethren.
That is what this section is about. The creative skills and endeavors of your roommates, the pretty girl up the street, your neighbour down the hall, the guy who sits next to you in class, your friend who’s always practicing but not at practice, will be showcased, explored, explained, considered, critiqued, and admired from these pages. Read this because they are your friends and because you do or dabble in one of these things and want people to recognize and appreciate what you care about.
That’s the page, and this is the column. From here, let us foster a conversation on campus about what we are doing when we perform, when we create, when we practice and dedicate ourselves to expressing not just ourselves, but the human condition, in a tradition of provocations and celebrations. Next week, Junior Forester McClatchey will be writing about rap, not just as a student of the genre, but as a rapper. It is an opportunity for us to talk about rap as music and as poetry, with the rules of expression that apply to both.
This is Hillsdale College’s newspaper, but Hillsdale College is, after all, named after Hillsdale, Michigan. So, while economic contractions and the college’s growing national prestige make Hillsdale a college town more than Hillsdale College the town’s college, this is a page for Hillsdale County too. You are our neighbors. We want to know how you celebrate beauty, communicate truth, create good things.
To that end, from campus or county, I want to hear from you. Send me an email at mmeadowcroft@hillsdale.edu and tell me about the novel your sister wrote, the mural your church completed, the little play that could, and I will see where it fits in Hillsdale’s conversation about art. That’s these pages, and let’s start today.