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Community Corner

Are the Arts Underappreciated?

Columnist Marsia Mason interviews a Moorestown artist about his work and asks whether we have misplaced priorities when it comes to our children's education.

Divining baskets are not a hot topic in Moorestown. Nor are "soul boats" from Norse mythology or shaman baskets, found in many African cultures. Yet when I sat down with local artist David Gamber to discuss his Perkins Center for the Arts-Collingswood installation entitled “The Divining Armada,” I not only got a refresher course in anthropology, but insight into an artist who makes his living in a very conservative town where the arts have long taken a backseat to sports.

I’ve been an off-and-on member of Perkins-Moorestown for years, taking numerous pottery classes and enrolling my sons in their summer arts camp when they were younger. Although I haven’t always supported Perkins via membership dues, I have always been grateful for its presence in town. So in May, I bought a ticket to their “Handcrafted” fundraiser at the Collingswood branch and cajoled a friend to go along. Neither of us are beer drinkers, so the wealth of small, handcrafted brews was not the attraction. The idea was to support our local arts center and, in a way, say "thank you" to the people who work tirelessly to run Perkins and give everyone a chance to participate in the fine and performing arts.

I expected a nice evening. I did not expect to fall in love.

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From the moment I saw “The Divining Armada,” I was smitten. Enthralled. The open, rather rustic gallery space was filled with the artwork of others, but all I could see was the incredible beauty of Gamber’s creation. Hanging from fishing line affixed to the ceiling were dozens of black vessels, boats filled with brightly colored objects—some of which were discernible, some of which were not. What did it mean? My friend got tired of my gape-mouthed study of the armada and moved on to another room. I walked the perimeter of the work and realized the individual vessels were hung in such a way to resemble one huge ship.

Thus began my quest for a conversation with Gamber in order to quiz him about his installation. Easier said than done, because David Gamber is one busy man. Besides being the married father of three children, Gamber also teaches at Perkins-Moorestown, Camden County Community College, Philadelphia Community College and part-time at Moorestown Friends. Somehow, between all these jobs, he still finds time to create pottery. Last week, we finally managed to meet at the library for a very interesting conversation. 

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My first questions were about the Armada. What does it mean? Where did your inspiration come from? Do you have a layaway plan so I can buy one of the vessels? This is where the divining basket comes in. The many vessels used in different cultures and shamanistic religions inspired Gamber. The divining basket comes from African cultures, but has also appeared in Chinese and Indonesian religious ceremonies. The shaman or medicine man would take significant objects and put them into his basket. The basket was shaken, the objects were read, and a prophecy was given. Since I hadn’t read his “artist’s statement” at the Perkins fundraiser, I asked him about it. He smiled and said, “I hate writing artist’s statements.”

“I saw this piece as a tool to help move the conversation forward. It was not about telling the future, the way the shamans did," he said. "We spend too much time thinking about the future, holding on to things like horoscopes. When does that obsession become counterproductive?” 

Like the shaman, Gamber filled his boats with objects significant to him, in the hope that these objects would strike a chord with others: “As long as they pick up on something from my artwork, I’m pleased.”

So how did such an intelligent, artistic individual end up in Lacrosse-town? His wife, Suzanne, whom he met at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, is a Jersey girl with roots in Haddonfield and Moorestown. Once they got married and started a family, they moved from Riverside to Moorestown to take advantage of the school district, and to be closer to family. 

Our conversation really got interesting when we talked about the arts, sports and education. Sadly, when there is a budget crunch in schools, the first thing to go is the arts, not soccer. 

“Our society sees the arts as a money-hole," Gamber lamented. "Whereas sports are a moneymaker, or at least money-neutral.”

Just last week, I spoke to my 23-year-old son’s seventh grade language arts teacher when she dropped by the library. She laughed fondly about teaching my “outside-the-box” thinker of a son, then shook her head sadly and said, “We just don’t see that creative spark in kids anymore. It’s all about testing and scores.”

 Gamber agreed: “We don’t develop creativity anymore because it’s not testable. Kids today are tested within an inch of their lives. We do more to teach creativity OUT of kids than teaching them to be creative.”  

So, I wondered aloud, did Gamber see himself as a crusader for the arts? Was he developing future Picassos?

“Look, 75-90 percent of my students will NOT go on to become artists," he replied. "My goal is to teach them problem-solving skills, to spark their creativity, and to find out what they want to say and give them an artistic means to say it. These are skill sets they can apply to the rest of their lives.”

We finished our conversation with a lament about the general underappreciation of the arts: “People here doesn’t realize how wonderful it is to have an arts center in town." 

We’re not just an affluent town of 24/7 sports, travel teams and year-round soccer. We have two wonderful theater companies and a great arts center where anyone can take a painting class or learn to throw a pot, where countless little girls have donned tutus to learn ballet, and where music lessons are taught every day. 

Sadly, “The Divining Armada” has set sail. It was disassembled after the Perkins fundraiser in May, although it lives on in photographs. If you’re interested in seeing more of David Gamber’s work, he will be the curator of a show at Camden County Community College, called “Communal Fire,” from September 4-26. Joining him will be several other clay artists from Perkins, including executive director Alan Willoughby.

No less a scientist than Albert Einstein noted that the value of an arts education lies not in the learning of many facts but in “the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.”  

Thank you, Perkins Center for the Arts, and thank you David Gamber.

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