We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Bruce Orr a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Bruce, appreciate you joining us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
I started a youth arts education company called InkWell, teaching art in libraries, museums and local non-profits. I quit my job of 13 years at an arts non profit called RAW. I was paid enough to live, barely, and had your basic terrible benefits package, standard paycheck to paycheck gig with no hope of advancement. I was given an opportunity to work with the city of Peabody if I could write a grant. Simultaneously, I had another opportunity to create a large scale installation in an abandoned Family Dollar in downtown Beverly, Massachusetts where I live. I took the risk and accepted both opportunities. I am a fifty two year old with two teenagers and live in one of the most expensive places in America, which made it scarier. I wrote the grant and got it.
As far as how it turned out, that remains to be seen. I started the installation in February, while going to part time. I left for good in June and started teaching at the Peabody public library last week. For six months I had an old department store all to myself, ghosts included, pretty much an artists dream. Even if this whole thing falls flat, I can say I went for it. I am a former puppeteer, so I make things out of cardboard and trash. Working with the them of “Garden City” I transformed the storefront into a cardboard landscape of bugs, birds, flowers and other creatures. It was fun!
InkWell classes have been amazing! Kids are different now, and I am always trying to adjust to be the best teacher I can for them. I teach them things I feel I have a good understanding of, illustration, painting, drawing, puppet making and even some animation. It is very similar to the work I did at the non profit, I just have more autonomy now.
To be honest, it was a thrill to leave an unsatisfying job, and pursue my dream of being an independent artist who teaches kids. Several months into starting InkWell, the honeymoon has wore off and I am hustling, thinking months ahead, writing grants, meeting with local creative organizations, doing a newsletter, podcast and staying on top of it. You never know what will or will not work out. My job meant everything will stay the same. InkWell can only keep growing.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I have a 25 year art career in art education, mural painting, puppetry, comics, illustration and art therapy. I am a full time artist who works directly with youth, in places where arts programming is scarce. I have devoted my life to this work, in schools, libraries and non profits. I am currently the driving force behind InkWell, hosting free afterschool art programming in Peabody, Massachusetts.
I grew up in Delaware City, a small town next to an oil refinery. I was always playing with star wars figures and keeping an illustrated journal of insects. My childhood was spent inventing fantasy worlds, and it never stopped. I went to art school, and then graduate school in Philadelphia, at two schools that no longer exist.
In Philadelphia I became part of an anarchist puppet collective called Puppet Uprising, and worked for a social justice puppet organization called Spiral Q Puppet Theatre. In 2000 spent a summer in Berlin working on a comic book called Thred, loser of the prestigious xeric grant. I self published comics under the moniker Immersion Press. In 2001 I drove to Portland, Oregon and started the Mudeye Puppet Company, creating original puppet shows with an environmental focus, and traveled from school to school teaching kids how to make art from trash. This was my job for 9 years. I made giant recycled sandals for Keen footwear, I opened for Ryan Gosling’s band Dead Man’s Bones and was part of Metro murals who fought Clearchannel when they outlawed murals there. When we won, I painted the first legal mural in years, at SCRAP (School Community Reuse Access Project).
I moved to Beverly, Massachusets in 2011 to accept a position as art therapist at RAW, a renowned arts non profit in Lynn. I quit 13 years later to start InkWell, teaching art to kids and creating large scale public works of art.
The kind of art I do is giant stag beetles made out of cardboard and foam rubber, colorful school murals with monkeys playing with kids, paintings of World War II fighter planes swirling around a man’s exploding head, things like that. I like Novacolor paints, prismacolor pencils, Faber Castell pens and things I find in the street. I am a muralist, an illustrator, a puppeteer and educator.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
Right now I am journaling on what will be an illustrated memoir, as much as possible, called Art Year. I quit my soul sucking job to make art and teach art on my own, to live life on my terms. I am much happier just making decisions on my own. I budgeted enough to do this for one year, the art year. The goal is to make art as best I can. With a one year budget, I don’t have to worry every single second about money, but I have a very specific goal, to be a self sustaining artist/educator on one year.
Today a thing popped up in my instagram about how gifted kids turn out so sad and unfulfilled. The comments were filled with old people commiserating about how they were once so full of promise and now are just lost. I was a gifted kid once, and have felt that, but I think it’s not the kids, it’s the culture. Our culture discourages any kind of creativity, unless we’re using it as some kind of commercial buzzword. My goal, as an artist, is to promote REAL creativity. This could be teaching kids how to make a puppet out of a cardboard box. It could be building an apple tree out of 5 gallon buckets. It could be creating a comic book of laboratory animals rocketed into space and transformed into cybernetic super beings. I just ran an all day art activity at a local museum. You can see the glow in the kids’ eyes when they’re doing art. Sometimes you can see it in the parents’ eyes.
So there’s the goal of making kids happier with art. And there’s the goal of making my own art. I don’t know if either of these things count as goals or missions, for me it’s my life’s work, and I don’t have a choice. I think a lot of creative people would say the same thing, that they need to do art the way they need oxygen to breathe.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
Most of what I learned in art school and graduate school I had to unlearn. Too many things to list here! I think the most damaging advice I was given in higher education is how things are supposed to be. And in graduate school, what an Art Therapist is and does. I went into one of my first full time jobs in a locked acute psychiatric unit with a bit of a “I have a master’s degree and I only do this kind of project” attitude, and that was wrong of me. I did better when I did more fun projects stemming from my own ideas. I was more successful when I did things my own way when I started the Mudeye Puppet Company. I still love to learn new things, and have so much to learn. I have worked with many talented artists in my life and that has been a blessing! School just always made me feel bad. I learned more at my college work study library job than any art history class. My supervisor, Jadwiga, was an elderly eccentric Polish woman who wore a side ponytail and looked like Greta Garbo. She knew work study was silly, so in a four hour shift, she gave me 15 books to shelve and said “goodbye”. I read art books all day! She was my favorite person at University of the Arts. She would send me out to buy her coffee and to get myself a hot chocolate.
We should all be learning new skills all the time if we can. Doing things your own way is what makes you an artist. It’s also what makes you an educator. And stay connected. Anyone who wants to reach out to me, I will write back.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://bruceorr.com
- Instagram: @mudeyepuppets
- Other: [email protected] for inquiries
Image Credits
Bruce Orr