Aidan Krell is a team player – and a rebel too.
Born in West Burlington, 18, Krell spent 10 years of his early childhood in Portland, Oregon, where a local woman nurtured the talents of neighborhood kids by hosting a free arts camp each summer.
“She taught us to develop skills, but more importantly, she encouraged us to use those skills to express ourselves,” Krell said. “We weren’t ashamed of painting outside the lines or creating something that looked different than the model.”
Out of this experience came the idea that true art combines talent, skill and meaning.
Krell’s slightly disturbing social commentary “Welcome to School Tyranny” is featured on The Teen Vice Show with Krell and Kelli Edwards at the Art Center of Burlington.
Krell is a senior at West Burlington High School who will be going to Luther College this fall on a football scholarship to play as a center back.
In his three years as a starting fullback for Notre Dame-West Burlington boys’ soccer — the Nikes are 52-6 and helped the Nikes win the Class 1A state championship last season — Krell’s sophomore season was wiped out by COVID-19. He was a member of the All-State tournament team last year and a Class 1A All-State selection.
“In football we have tactics, but you can’t plan everything as precisely as in basketball,” he said. “There are no plays, so you just go with it and you have to strategize what’s coming your way right this second.”
In other words, it’s like an artist: you invent it as you go along.
“A lot of people say defense is an art, especially in the football world, because you have to go with the flow and if you don’t get it right, you lose, right?” Krell said.
Krell has received three awards as an artist: he and Edwards were selected to intern at the Art Center of Burlington; he received a Sadie Simonson Memorial Art Scholarship from Luther College; and he is one of only four seniors in the entire state to have received a grant from the Iowa Arts Council.
“I don’t know if I’m prouder of Aidan’s dedication to his football game or his art,” said Krell’s grandma, Sandy Krell-Andre. I love watching him play as much as I love his art.”
ACB program director Brandy Swarz said Krell is a driven and talented kid who is well beyond his years, someone who thinks outside the box.
“I wouldn’t call him rebellious, I would call him progressive,” Swarz said. “I think maybe some more traditional teachers or the administration might see him as rebellious. I don’t think anyone sees him as problematic.”
Black described Krell’s art as abstract.
“It’s like you’re diving into his mind. It is not easy; it’s very abstract but you can connect with it and it makes you feel like you’re young again, makes you feel like you’re a teenager trying to figure yourself out. It reminds you of being in high school, but it’s all very relatable for all ages.”
Someone asked Krell if he expected his art to offend some people.
“I’m counting on it,” he said.
Krell’s work at ACB compares American schools to American prisons and includes a central sculpture, “Arnold Rockefeller”.
Why does Krell think that as an 18-year-old high school student from Iowa, he would know about prison?
“I know the similarities. I read into the story and it doesn’t seem right that it’s basically built on the workforce and on Rockefeller doing the whole education thing in his day to have the school like factories,” Krell said . “They just pump the kids out and after they graduate they go to a factory. It’s like, ‘Walk by the bell, do as you’re told.’ No critical thinking.”
John D. Rockefeller founded and financed the General Education Board in 1902 to fund schools across the country and was instrumental in shaping the school system in rural white and black schools in the South. The aim of the GEB was to promote agriculture through the development of related high school programs.
“I don’t want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers,” Rockefeller said.
Among other things, board member Frederick T. Gates said: “We will not look for great artists, painters, musicians, or lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, or statesmen, of which we have a large stock.”
Pipeline from school to prison
According to Nancy A. Heitzeg, professor of sociology and critical studies of race and ethnicity at St. Catherine University, the school-to-prison pipeline is “the disproportionate tendency of minors and young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds to be incarcerated for increasing harshness school and local politics. In addition, this is due to educational inequality in the United States. Many experts have credited factors such as school disruption laws, zero-tolerance policies and practices, and an increase in policing in schools.
Krell said he hopes to raise public awareness of what the school system is like from his perspective as a high school student.
“It kind of represents the suspicion that we have,” he said. “You don’t learn to trust a school system because authority takes away your freedom.”
Krell believes armed police and metal detectors in public schools only exacerbate the problem. He cited the Stanford Prison Experiment as an example.
Stanford Prison Experiment
The Stanford Prison Experiment was a two-week simulation of a prison environment by Stanford University psychology professor Philip Zimbardo in 1971. Male students were recruited for $15 a day to take part in a “psychological study of prison life.” Volunteers were randomly assigned to the roles of prisoner or jailer.
Volunteers selected as guards were given uniforms and instructed to prevent prisoners from escaping. The “prisoners” were then arrested by the real Palo Alto police force, and over the next five days, the “guards”‘ psychological abuse of the prisoners became increasingly brutal. Zimbardo ended the experiment on day six after Berkeley psychology professor Christina Maslach assessed the conditions. The Stanford experiment has often been criticized as one of the most unethical psychology experiments in history.
What is the solution?
What is the solution to getting the schools out of jail?
“I would say less rules and more freedom,” he said. “You get fewer arrests if you legalize marijuana, right? But making marijuana illegal won’t stop anyone. So you might as well let it flow. Another thing that could help would be more conflict resolution studies taught to the children and more classes on how to express their feelings so they can get more help.”
“The question is whether he’s going to be a footballer who’s an artist or an artist who’s also a footballer,” says Krell-Andre
The Krell and Edwards exhibition is on the mezzanine level of the Art Center of Burlington at 301 Jefferson St. through May 31.
“Teen Vice Show” is sponsored by The Som.