ap190223 Touching the past, feeling the future  

Recently I was in touch with a former student. I met him in the mid-1970’s and we have seen each other and talked together many times since then. We’re not close friends, but we are close enough that he invites us to his family affairs. I’ve worked in his studio. I’ve even walked in his shoes, literally!

He commented on a Facebook page, referring to his student days with his compliments. His daughter is now an art major – like he was – in the same school, the UW School of Art. I told him about my Mr. Chips syndrome – a feature of my NIF (Nuclear Integrative Fantasy).

He’s thinking about a reunion for the benefit of his daughter and her peer group of art students. It would be a get together to talk about the past and how students of the past fifty years have used their education.

Thinking about this, I came to a memory of a book he and his peer group made – a report from a lower-classman seminar. I searched for this book on my shelf and as I did so I had an epiphany. I wanted to touch this book, take it from the shelf, and be reminded of his work and the work of his classmates.

It wasn’t on the shelf, however. It may be in my studio across the street. I may look for it later. The feeling, the epiphany, lingered. It was the same feeling one gets in a museum, seeing artifacts from the past and the mind wandering to these places and times mentally reconstructing what people were thinking and doing then.

There is a kind of distortion, however, a lack of focus. In film special effects, there’s one in which they try to convey this flash back with wavy distortions or soft focus, color shifts and camera angles to simulate time out of time.

My friend is thoroughly in the world of art and the art museum, volunteering his time to do docent and guide work there. He has produced thousands of artworks and traveled back and forth to Russia in pursuit of his art and teaching. His life has been quite amazing, as one can see on the Internet in articles about his work.

Now he’s proposing a reunion, as he believes his work at the UW School of Art was the beginning of it all and, like any parent (myself included) he wants the best for his daughter.

My epiphany lingers long enough for me to begin this essay, but there is more. For one thing, if I were to think his path could be similar to his daughter’s, for one thing there would be no underclass seminar for her.

I don’t have to touch this book to be reminded of the circumstance of that seminar. My mind needs no tactile contact. He has a copy of the same book, in fact, because I gave him an extra around the time his daughter was born almost a generation ago.

What I’m reminded of is what I consider a better student experience than what I think his daughter will experience.

I am making a mistake in thinking so, however, because I see the world partly through that old frame of reference which Einstein warns us is an error in thinking. He made the comment in reference to solving problems.

Are we to think about solving problems?

In the days I created the seminar, the problem was that there were inadequacies in the curriculum. Management, for example – what is called professional practices today – was non-existent. My friend took up the matter of framing art with cost-cutting methods. Another student team took up papermaking.

Are the curricular offerings at the UW School of Art adequate today to prepare his daughter for forty years of living? What is the frame of reference? Is it different today than in 1976?

I think so. A comparative study should include, for example, climate change and socio-political issues and the artist’s relation to them. Consider, for example, money to live on and develop security enough to make art.

I’ve got mine, but what are her chances, at the age of seventy-seven, or, her father’s at age sixty-seven, to be in a position like ours?

Later in the morning I returned to this essay. As it was in he midst of my work – which consisted of updating several files for the Internet. As I worked – moving my cursor over my logic tree, opening and closing directories, updating pages in Dreamweaver – I thought again about her.

Could she follow what I’m doing, if watching over my shoulder? Could my former student? What questions would arise?

It should occur to both that I’m doing something their schooling did not, and is not, preparing them for. I call it Legacy Management.

There is a broken link in the line of education where we hold something in common: The UW School of Art. I was on the path I was on up until 1985. My former students were left behind in some areas but stayed on the path of convention.

I did not fit in, and I do not fit in today. Much as I might like to share in community development where the arts and technology offer his daughter a path she can follow and a path she can trust, it’s not likely.