pp161004 Envy and vindication  

The word, “vindicate” may express my need, i.e., I need, “to clear, as from an accusation, imputation, suspicion, or the like: to vindicate my honor. 2. To afford justification for; justify: as in, “Subsequent events vindicated his policy.”

Today I read another bestowal of honor on Anne Focke—the UW Art School “Alum in Residence.” I wrote to her my congratulations, and briefly vented my sad story—especially focused on my brief moment of recognition by the art history students, including Candace Kern.
This, plus my current work on projects spanning the past fifty years (coincident with Anne’s career), brings rise to a constant awareness. Like an elephant in the room, there is my need for vindication, to have my reputation as a teacher restored.
I was not “accused” formally back in the days of my teaching at the UW, because I did few things you could say as wrong. However, I was a whistle-blower. When people in the administration did things that were against university codes, or were harmful to students’ chances at getting the best education, I complained.
Complaining got me nowhere; so I would threaten to resign over some issues. I did resign at one point, and then retracted my resignation at Norman Lundin’s urging. Constantly being accused of being in a conflict with Glen Alps, and doubled and redoubled my efforts just to do a good job of teaching.
And that was the conflict: I stood for good teaching, research, production and services, but Glen stood for Glen. He had the backing of faculty, too, demonstrated to me one time when the chairman (a former student of Glen’s) appointed two others to be on an ad hoc printmaking council—Louis Hafermehl and Hazel Koenig.
In our meeting I was adamant about hiring a woman printmaker. “I want what’s best for the students,” I declared.
Hazel Koening said, “We want what’s best for Glen!”
There it was.
Because these days I’m working on some form of memoirs, I’m doing a lot of reading of my journals and videos. Concomitantly I’m teaching online in connection with my video archive and my Halfwood Presses. When I read about Anne’s new role, I realized that my reputation at the UW art school will never be vindicated.
The powers-that-be are still the powers-that-be, taking their direction from the graves of old, dead professors whose name they venerate.
All I ever wanted to be was the best in what I do. I also wanted to be part of “the best” of what there is to be had. And to be part of a Great University was my aim from the day I was selected by Glen Alps to be his protégé.
I was—and am—naïve to think that was what Glen wanted to be, too. I had to have it hammered into my head that he wanted what was best for him.
I was a true researcher, however, and I found that his role in the development of the collagraph consisted only of giving it a name. No one had ever bothered to name this mere technical innovation—unless you take Rolf Nesch who, for some reason, came up with metal grafiks.
Naïve I may be, but I was diligent in my research and my teaching. It was wrong that I should have been purged from the printmaking division, that Alps’ works should be purged, too, and that the direction of the printmaking division should be turned over the chairman, Richard Arnold and people like Bob Jones and Mike Spafford—who think printmaking is a minor extension of painting and drawing.
It must have terrified many on the faculty to think electronic arts would someday be as important as the physical, visual arts. The idea that installations and performance arts would crowd painting’s supremacy, and perhaps render it irrelevant, was troubling - to say the least.

I thought it would change peoples’ minds if I tripped out around the world and recorded evidence that I may be right about reinventing the printmaking curriculum to include other media such as photo, film, video and computer graphics.

It only made my position worse. Proof of work was not what they wanted—not in THAT direction, anyway. They perverted my work to mean proof I was nuts—and they pushed me to the edge and out of the printmaking division!
They won.
I lost.
However, in the long run, I won because today I have sufficient mastery of media that I can teach online, all over the whole wide world. I may not have an institution of which to claim a part and a credible role, but I have some of my former students’ good will, and on the Web people who come to me for instruction and fraternity.
This may, in a roundabout way, be as good as vindication as I’m going to get.