No more prizes for me

     In the art world there are many awards given to artists for reasons of their art, their contributions to the community and their impact on the culture of their nation and its people. For over twenty years I thought I might someday win a big award and I kept my eye on prizes. This notion may have started when I was in high school when I became aware that, besides good grades, someone like me could get awarded for jobs well done in art and publishing.

By the time I was ready to graduate from my formal education (graduate school) I had a few sips from the awards goblet and I liked it. Getting a job at the University of Washington School of Art was quite a big gulp; in fact, it was bottom’s up! For the next nineteen years I continued on my binge, winning all kinds of awards from prizes at local art fairs to a National Endowment for the Arts grant for video work and, along with these, promotion to full professor.

Prizes came also from the UW in the form of research grants—usually less than a thousand dollars, but helpful for paying for non-budgeted items such as videotape and experiments in printmaking. Two sabbatical leaves—in 1976 and 1983—plus unpaid leaves of absence were wonderful perks for a young, ambitious artist and teacher like me. The sabbatical in 1983 was a substantial win, coming as it did in a lean year for Washington State colleges.

To me it meant the crowning achievement of my career because, with a fact-finding trip around the world, I would have the proof that would justify a shift in my field—printmaking—toward a new union of the antique printmaking arts with new technologies. It would give my students a new outlook on their future as global artists. My family was willing to go along for the ride, and we took on a $50,000 debt to make the trip to augment the 66% of my $29,000 salary.

It did not turn out the way I wanted, however; instead, that sabbatical was the last major award I would receive for the rest of my life, the beginning of the end of my career in education. The leave was given to me so I would go away long enough to let the administration put a choke hold on the changes I was pressing for and fortify the old guard determination to limit printmaking as a minor art and craft in the UW School of Art.

When I started this essay, I titled it, “Why I will never win an award for what I do,” but then I removed the title because it sounded hopeless. I probably will never give up hope for the union of antique printmaking arts with new technologies. If I can marry these, my award will not come from the established, award-giving entities but from the thousands of individuals who purchase what I have participated in making—a company that makes hardware and software for printmaking experience.