ps190718 When an artist dies: The flight of his body of work 

 When an artist dies, the event should be like the soul leaving the body in an artistic way. Some people have told stories and made movies and TV shows depicting the soul departing. Ghost comes to mind. The artist put their soul in their work, and it should fly out like that.

Marvin Oliver was – and is – an artist. I didn’t know him. I may have seen him in the early 1970s because he worked on his MFA degree at the UW, graduating in 1973. If he took a printmaking class, which is unlikely because he was probably in the sculpture program, then his name might be in my database of former students.

He died recently. I read that he was on the faculty at the UW art school. I was a little surprised because I didn’t know him. He taught there from 1974 on, and still I never met him. He was associated with Native American Studies. Stonington Gallery shows he made screen prints besides glass art and mixed media sculpture.

I wonder, what is it about the UW where two people like myself and Marvin Oliver never met? Why is it that I am only finding out about him now? Is it because I’m white and he’s Native? The closest I came to know a Native American artist was when I met and worked briefly with Edward Raub.

Was I being the acquisitive white man, frankly wanting his help to validate my story about the carver who made a halfwood press in his or her own native way?

When I met Edward and warned him, I would take advantage of him, he joked, “It wouldn’t be the first time.” I was innocent, not taking into account his and his people’s history with us white invaders. How deep the feelings run I will never know.

I justify my actions because I meant to work as an artist, to collaborate with Ed. I did work, too, more perhaps than Edward realizes. But why should he care? In the end, we cashed out – I sold the press and paid him what was probably a minimum wage - $750 for his carving and another $50 for his share of the sale of his paddle (which I paid him $150 for, and framed it).

When I die, like Marvin Oliver, and when Edward Raub dies, it should not be left as an article in the local newspaper and a Facebook notice. Death of an artist in the digital, Internet age should not be passive. The event should be like a spring unwinding, our souls may leave the body quietly, but our art should blossom out into the Internet like a persistent online interactive game – a massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

That is what I have in mind.

Marvin Oliver, thank you for reminding me, and nudging me toward the realization of my vision of an artists asset management and legacy transfer game.