Teacher Rises to the Occasion

This is what artists do, Patti Post says. They create from scratch. They erase and rebuild. They take what the world has dealt them and turn it into something beautiful.

So 10 weeks after a fire ravaged the 30-year teacher’s nationally recognized art program at Ventura High School, reducing paintings, sculptures, handmade drawing benches and decades of teaching materials to ash, that is what she has done.

This time her canvas was a drab, portable classroom. Her paint was in boxes of donated materials, from expensive art supplies to thrift-store aprons, which came out of garages, art studios and businesses throughout Ventura County.

The finished product is not a replica of the old classroom. But then again, that’s the point.

“It’s a new day for us,” she told her students as they returned to school last week. “It’s a wonderful time to be in this place, in spite of everything we lost.”

From the loss, the teacher is determined to find a lesson.

Her inspiration, and the metaphor she will help her students invoke in their artwork this year, was something a parent said to her as she huddled with students the night of the fire in June.

“Remember,” he said, “the Phoenix rises every 500 years.”

That image, from a story in Greek mythology about a graceful bird that emerges from the ashes of fire as a symbol of renewal and rebirth, hit her instantly.

“That was a turning point for us,” Post said as she prepared to start the new year. “We needed a visual symbol to hold on to, something to sustain both ourselves and the community.”

It was a Sunday night, Post remembers, when she got the call and made “the longest drive of her life” from her home in Santa Barbara to the school in Ventura’s midtown.

“I don’t remember much,” she recalled. “Just that sinking feeling that something had died.”

Long before Post arrived at the campus, intense flames had engulfed the 900-square-foot, Art Deco-style building at the high school.

Almost everything inside was destroyed: 30 student portfolios, life-sized body casts, demonstration projects and pieces Post had used to teach her class for decades. The blaze, authorities later concluded, was sparked accidentally, although the exact cause was never determined.

Any artwork that wasn’t charred in the fire was lost during the weeks that followed as the old building, boarded up over the summer, rotted in its own toxic mildew.

“Nothing came out,” she said. “Not one paintbrush.”

But by the first day of school, students arrived to find the new classroom far from barren. Colorful paintings adorned the walls and sculptures filled empty corners.

The T-shaped “drawing horses” that had made her old classroom so unusual also were back. Post and her husband, Tom, had spent the summer remaking them.

And around the room were encouraging, hand-painted posters with such messages as “Believe in yourself” and “Trust your ability.”

“It’s already looking like home,” Ventura High Principal Larry Emrich said. “Kids are going to feel comfortable again, and they will get right to business.”

But some of the returning students said seeing the new space for the first time last week only made them yearn for the old classroom--the place they considered their sanctuary.

“I feel like we need to spend a whole weekend and make it dirty,” senior Jessica Beckerman said. “It’s almost like you don’t want to touch anything, it’s so clean.”

Post’s optimism, however, helps.

“She’s so amazing,” Jessica said. “She understands, and she reminds us that everything happens for a reason.”

Post’s program, which she dubs “art school in high school,” has turned out graduates who have then studied at many of the nation’s most prestigious art schools. In 1990, she was one of 44 teachers honored with Disney’s American Teacher Award.

Recently, she expanded the basic arts program to include filmmaking and 3-D animation, ending the school year with a student film festival.

The program also is known in the community for a student-produced, “wearable art” fashion show each fall. Past themes for the outfits have been plastics and natural materials. This year’s theme will be birds.

“The first line of an Emily Dickinson poem reads, ‘Hope is the thing with feathers,’ ” Post said. “We’ve embraced the metaphor, and now we’re going to invoke it through the fashion birds.”

Post said she could not be more grateful for what the community has given her students over the last 10 weeks. But there was magic in that old classroom. She knows it. Even the firefighters who doused the flames told Post they felt it.

“It’s the family photos,” Post said, smiling and crying all at once. “And I’m just going to miss it. If you really want to heal, you have to go through the whole process. I’m still working through it.”