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| 1962 during summer vacation |
Friday, February 7, I shared a few of my memories of the Portland State College's Art Department in the 1960's with Portland State University's Foundation's Kailin Mooney and Ally. Then they told me about the developing School of Art + Design graduate program.
I believe for over 55 years there is a strong thread of continuity.
To the left is Issac Allen
Soon after he changed his name to Issac NoMo because his real name and roots were wiped out by slavery. He has come to identify himself as Isaka Shamsud-Din, artist, educator, Black Muslim and activist. His on line resume connects him with the King School Museum of Contemporary Art. The student run museum brings national artists to the school for student workshops. The museum serves economically under priveledged students who would otherwise have no art exposure.
In 1963 I felt uncomfortable being the only student being photographed, so I invited Issac to stand in a silly photograher's choreographed pose. Luckily never published in the Oregonian! Obviously not Issac's or my most comfortable moment!
In the photograph to Issac's left are me in the middle and my mother Margaret Widler.
The photographic session and interview was by The Oregonian newspaper to promote a student sale to benefit art scholarships. The idea of having a student sale to fund student scholarship was mother's idea. As president of the Mother's Club she brought about and organized the event for several years. She was sharing her art entrepreneurship that went way back before she worked her way through college during the depression at the University of California, Berkeley. This was her way of supporting me! She had the best intentions of sharing her enthusiasm for art education: The results were mostly good.
Being photographed for a featured article in the Oregonian made me giddy. Not Issac! Issac also had identity issues searching for who he was. The art market to him was dominated by white culture, he was unsure if he could survive as an artist because he was black. He was not excited by the student sale.
Issac already had a mission in life to document his experiences as a West Coast black man and a survivor of the Vanport flood that had destroyed Portland's African American neighborhood. He was a few years older and far more mature than I was. I remember the figure paintings he did under the instruction of Robert Colescott. Issac was painting the African American experience before his instructor embraced his identity and expressed it. But later after a trip to Egypt Colescott became a renown African American painter who depicted the hypocracy of African American sterrotypes.
The sale of my painting at the student scholarship sale boosted my ego. But Issac did not sell his heart felt, expressive painting about Vanport; he was very, very discouraged. Not even the sale of his ceramic pot to my mother was compensation. His pot expressed his soul beaten and scarred on the exterior but soft warm melted chocolate on the inside.
After the sale Heidel spoke to our upper division painting class. He tried to comfort Issac and others who did not sell. Heidel said that it makes no sense what sells and what doesn't. Sales have no bearing on the authenticity and value of our paintings. Heidel's intention was to make art vital to our life as artists and a vital positive force in the Portland community. In other words PSC art curriculum was not trade school preparation to train us as producers of saleable paintings.
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Completed in
Figure drawing and painting class
Instructor Richard Prasch
1964 |
If not the goal of instructing students on how to make saleable paintings for the art market, what was department head Heidel's vision for Portland State's Art Department and Portland?
One precious part of my Portland State art studies was mentorship with artists who had a rich creative process. Frederick Heidel, Richard A. Muller, Richard Prasch did not demonstrate how they personally drew or painted. I didn't even go to galleries to see what their work looked like. They shared their process through assignments while allowing me to try different ways of putting down marks and paint where my intuitive voice seeped into my work. Heidel would gently steer me away from my own departures made for shallow reasons. He believed I had my own story worth expressing.
My three mentors didn't have rules or techniques but posted examples of masters of painting from history. As I was leaving Oregon after finishing at PSC, Heidel told me that he hoped he had not damaged my intuitiveness. I was an intuitive painter when i didn't know what that meant. He said do not make academic paintings. Do not make studies. Make every painting yours. Do not sell your work because you will need it as references as you develop. Have a rich art development.
My development in art is now richly satisfying to me despite having sold important pieces. In some cases I arrange to get them back. As I have selectively adopted values of the PSU faculty to my life, my creativity expands to approach life's challenges.
I thank my mother and faculty at PSC. Basic Design instructor Jean Kendall Glazer asked us to trace our path on how we move through our kitchen. I have expanded her ideas to how I move through life as being an artistic choice. My thinking has evolved to considering my values. And beyond to the opinion that we live in an art creative desert. Creating art is a basic human need. If everyone felt empowered to express their intuitiveness through the arts, the world would be more paeceful. Jealousy, greed, and violance would fade away.
November 22, 1963, I remember Professor
Richard Muller deeply shaken when he arrived late to our art history class.
He announced the shocking news that
President Kennedy was shot and most likely dead. He feared his optomistic hopes were destroyed for an enlightened future for our country. He was worried that the support of education and especially art education had just received a death blow.
Optimism had been high. Portland State College had its first graduate school - the School of Social Work headed by Dean Dr. Gordon Hearn as well as an idealistic Art and Architecture department headed by Professor Frederick Heidel. Optomism soared with the presidency of Robert F. Kennedy's support for education and the arts. PSC President Branford Millar declared that we are Portland State College now but soon to be Portland State University. Our belief in our exceptional goodness in the United States was cracked by the assasination of President Kennedy.
Never the less the hope continued.
The day President Kennedy was shot Professor Muller returned our term papers on the topic - a record of involvement in a piece of art. I believe a few days later in the next class session some of us were invited to participate in what Muller thought would be an important bridge to us becoming art citizens in our life beyond our college experience - a student run gallery. Six of us including Issac Allen and a psychology major started The White Gallery. A mission statement was our first task. Next weeks blog will be more about Muller's project that relates to the thread that continues today.
