vp190831 Sharing my world: What remains of my life 

Making use of lessons learned

In a paper by a professor I read that one of the things students hate about professors is that they assign the text he or she authored as reading for the course. “It’s conceit,” was the phrase that stuck in my mind.
This answers my curiosity as to why people at a recent gathering of the Seattle Print Arts registered dismissive expression when I told the group several volumes of my autobiography were available on amazon now – and that these covered the years to generations ago when I was at the UW.
Many of those at the meeting were graduates of the UW, and a few from those years. It was, I felt, not interesting to anyone there; in fact, I felt a sense of dismissal. The article where the professor said students thought it conceited that a teacher wrote the book for the class helped explain the reaction by the SPA members gathered there.
The professor also mentioned a series of books published in the 1980s and 90s which were critiques of US Higher Education and that help understand the problems we have with college today – high tuition costs, for one thing, and loss of the arts and humanities sectors.
There’s no point now in defending myself for my teaching. It’s what I did most of my teaching career and failed. I resigned from UW because I was fired from teaching printmaking, and that’s that. The story is in my memoirs, and I’m glad I write them despite few people will read it; and it’s water under the bridge.
What good is it? There is one good, and that would be that people today can learn from the mistakes made by people in the past and then not be condemned to live the errors over again. I hope young teachers never live through the experience I did; but it’s not likely they will, as the future of printmaking teaching jobs is in question.
What remains of my life that’s of use is not lessons to newly hired printmaking teachers into institutions of higher learning, but what is to be learned from the past fifteen years of my career. I say fifteen years because 2004 was when I detected an alternate universe to that which I was part of in the first twenty years of my art and teaching career.
In 2004, I did not design a simpler, smaller, and extensible printing press – the Mini Halfwood – with the purpose of extending printmaking. It was a joke. The press was a charmer, and people saw something in the design they liked for themselves. They wanted to buy it!
In 2016 had to withdraw from the work of making and marketing the press as my physical and mental limits have been shown to me – plus the failure of American democracy; but it remains to be seen what could be achieved if other people would extend the concept of an alternative printmaking world.
If not in the USA, then somewhere else.
Printmaking Access
I don’t have much time left but following are the four principles I pursue now and wish that I could share with people in the SPA who have concerns about the future of printmaking as it may be important in the world their youngsters are facing.
The first principle is fun.
The second principle is social.
The third principle is STREAMable
The fourth principle is economic.
All the above are topics I am working on, and they are summed up in two words: Printmaking Access.

vp190821 Why take a MOOC-making MOOC? Loneliness of the innovator - 

My dream of teaching 

I’m taking a MOOC in making a MOOC. It’s lonely and sometimes I think it’s pointless. It’s like being in a prison cell, in solitary, and daily they feed you a special formula and you eat it because it’s all there is to eat. And you’re not sure it’s good for you or wasting you.

I feel like writing about it, as though I’m on a therapist’s couch. It’s no wonder. I want to teach, but teaching is outmoded, obsolete and in some cultures in the USA, frowned upon. Especially disliked are new modes of teaching such online learning; these are unwelcome in large educational institutions.

Except those like Harvard, Stanford and MIT where they are less afraid to strike out into untested areas such as Massively Open Online Courses. I’m taking a MOOC so I can measure myself against these kinds of institutions.

These have pooled their resources – including money – to develop MOOCs in their specialties – except in the arts. In Humanities they have developed a few courses, but not in the applied arts such as my field – printmaking.

I am hoping to change this be reinventing printmaking as a technology so that it fits more of the existing MOOCs out there. The fundamental invention is the element of printmaking access, i.e., a press. In my plan, one must have not only a computer and a connection to the Internet, but also access to a press – preferable one designed to complement the MOOC.

My plan goes further than learning how to make an etching for ones’ fun and pleasure. My aim is to take the unheard-of step of pointing to an area of education I care about – STEM. I plan to tweak this by adding Reading and Art to make it STREAM.

There’s more. I want to create a channel for interaction among the people who take the MOOC with a type of social network where they share their work. MOOCs already have forums and other means to exchange images of work and videos, too.

Mine, however, is more specific in that it uses a “moment number” referring to the time and place where the printmaking took place. The intention is to create a virtual world where the highest form of intelligence is the print, date-stamped and including the GIS numbers to give other people a street view of the location where the print originated.

While attention around MOOCs has died down over the past decade, the Coursera company seems to have found a business model for free courses with something it calls Specializations. They’re essentially partial graduate degrees, on the cheap, requiring students to take a series of month-long courses on a focused topic such as data science.

I say, how about printmaking? Although the material is free to anyone to watch, students must pay a fee per course—usually about $70—for a verified certificate proving they successfully worked through it.

I take it further. They must build a press, etch the plate, print the plate (including the paper preparation) and participate in Proximates, the dedicated forum for sharing prints and back stories.

That means these newfangled microdegrees – or Mini MFAs - cost only a few hundred dollars in total.

Beyond that, I take the course to promoting jobs. With this degree, the highest level is the business plan to use the skills (and the press) to start small business selling services such as Sip ‘N Print and Build-A-Press workshops.

But, alas, I’m still in solitary and no one to talk to, no one to share my idea. Back in the days when I was at the UW, I used to find people to tell my ideas to and no matter how wild my ideas were, I usually could find someone to share it with. That was before the ban against new ideas that challenged the leaders’ minds.

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.

sp190710 Reason 8 for ARTISTSCRIP  

No more time 

Time is like real estate, there is no more of it. In our life we showed enough wisdom to invest in real estate over other peoples’ projects. First for a home, then for a gallery – which was also a hedge against the growing corruption in our government and corporations.

Those were wise investments. Now the property most important is time, and it’s running out. ARTISTSCRIP is many things, and in the world of investing, it can be important both to me and to those who participate in it.

If it became a movement, it could help save Earth’s human and other life sustainability.

Who will help me? Who?

vp190622 Is this what it’s like to die? All is quiet: 

  I get no emails. No press orders. No comments. Only one Facebook “friend” request. Is this what’s it’s like to die in obscurity – a phrase sometimes found in the annals of art history when an artist or poet, writer or other creative, inventive, discovering and imaginative individual passes?

Or is it, as prefer to think, my mysterious muse’ way of protecting me from entanglements with the distractions that emails, press order and comments on Facebook are to my real tasks of being creative, inventive, discovering and imaginative – in all, a producer of valuable things.

“Be gone, dull care” comes to mind. What? It turns out to be a title of “an extraordinary short animation, Evelyn Lambart and Norman McLaren painted colors, shapes, and transformations directly on to their filmstrip. The result is a vivid interpretation, in fluid lines and color, of jazz music played by the Oscar Peterson Trio.”

Something my muse dredged up out of my past, a film from the 1960s when I was a junior in college and Ron Carraher was bringing film to my attention. It was like the time Carl Chew and I were playing with video feedback and made the video, “My Father’s Farm from the Moon.”

“So,’ as Elmer Gates said on his deathbed, “this is how it has to be.” Whatever happened to Bill Ritchie and Carl Chew?

“Be gone, dull care.” What did they have in mind when they titled their film? What did Carl Chew and I have in mind? Stories I’d like to tell and, thanks to my freedom, I’m able to tell in my autobiography.

My stories are too long to tell in this age of sound bites and stampedes of people running over cliffs, fearing anything creative, inventive, newly rediscovered and imaginative which has not been vetted to fit on a “smart” phone.

The day after Carl sent me the advice I asked for regarding my Artistscrip idea, I checked out the title of his recommended reading: The art of selling altruism. But it was like the story of the yellow scarf tied ‘round the trees – there were too many books like that. I’m waiting for him to tell me which one to read.

In the meantime, I read one about partnerships for altruism[i], thinking of my strategic alliance with Rewana Nduchwa – my friend from Botswana – whose Kalahari Honey project is my current model. Reading the article, I felt like I could copy-write over it and insert Carl’s and my names into it and come up with a plan to, as I believe it can be done, sell off our legacy for the benefit of our chosen altruistic efforts.

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[i] https://www.marketingmag.com.au/hubs-c/opinion-karen-monaghan-agency-arts-organisations-partnerships/

es190604 Noble, notable links: Inspirational phrase from a TED talk  

He lunches in front of his computer with a TED talk on the screen, lunching and listening to a presentation by Beth Mortimer and her co-worker Tarje Nissen-Meyer and a phrase jumps out at him which reminds him of his current work with Mavis Nduchwa. “Nobl… 

 Paraphrasing Beth Mortimer, scientific researcher on TED talk given November, 2018, I want to connect their inspirational talk with my current project with Mavis Nduchwa:

“Advances in science, technology and business require noble links to be made across seemingly disparate topics.”

Did she say noble or notable? Whatever it was she said, I hear her words and I think of the example of disparate topics farming, conservation, wildlife preservation and the disparate topics of art printing, books, and papermaking.

We hope that agriculture, entrepreneurship and printmaking experience will lead to practical economic solutions in education of young people and their families.

How can we do that?

Begin with the economics of it – the economics of agriculture and art.

However, the word art is not what it appears to mean, it’s not what is conjured up in peoples’ minds, such as art galleries, museums, theaters, dance, concerts and movies. If you’re in a field of maize under a hot sun, the word art is out of place. The work of farmers is unlike anything to do with art.

I grew up on a farm and as a kid I worked under the hot sun and I wanted to die it was so hard. I wanted to leave farming and I became what I thought was an artist. However, teaching in the arts is what I did.

Sixty years later I’m writing books about that; but lately I’m giving most of my time to a farmer-turned-entrepreneur[1] and her goal of creating meaningful work in her community and raising money for educating the kids in her schools.

Economics of farming are not so different from the economics of art in that both depend for their meaning on consumers – one on food, the other for experiences. We cannot live without food and clean water – but if our bodies’ needs are met, then we enjoy experiences of art, craft and design.

We may experience these by looking, but scientific research has shown we are better at problem-solving if we have hands-on experience in art, craft and design.

If we have problems, then education – including creative experiences – will help solve them. It’s best to start young, and that’s where artists, crafts people and designers can help in the same way that farmers make their contributions to the world.

The devil is in the details, they say, and in the world today the devil is money. How does my co-worker Mavis bring money to her community? Surely it is through meaningful paid work – the work of farmers rewarded with sales of their products like any other productive farm worker.

How to bring creative experiences to the kids? Any of the tools for this – whether as simple color pens and paper or something more complicated and intriguing – takes money.

In my mind I go to Mavis’ country. I will not go there physically but I will use new technologies, from simple emails, Google Earth, and other Internet tools. I will show there is another kind of art, craft and design never seen in art galleries, museums and concert halls. It is printmaking intended for users, not consumers.

Adam Smith, one of the thinkers responsible for the wealth of some nations like the United States, is said to have written:

“Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.”

I made a bargain with Mavis – we would exchange ideas. My need is to empty our family’s art gallery. Her need is to bring art experiences to her community schools with the profits of meaningful farm work.

It is from my benevolence that she expects money, but from my own interest – the ability to labor on her behalf as well as the meaningful work that her project affords me.

Science, technology, reading, engineering, art and math comprise the magic pill to the poisons of fear and superstition because they provide for communication and the satisfaction of solving problems creatively.

I am solving my family’s problem creatively. I am inventing artistscrip. I began this work years ago with the help of people like Carl Chew – one of the artists who make stamps (artistamps). My problem is 2,350 unsold artworks that will never find art galleries or other venues for distribution – never will they find consumers who buy art in the old-world fashion.

A new reason for offering art for sale has opened, thanks to current crises facing humankind. We artists in the developed nations, with our wealth of time and resources, can come to the aid of other nations’ people by using our artworks as scrip – like stock certificates.

I can sell my art as artistscrip, providing for my family payroll and also for Mavis’ project in Botswana. Thanks to the Internet with all the creative methods it has brought about (crowdfunding, for example), we can share our resources of time and creative problem-solutions.

As Beth Mortimer said in her TED talk, we can find noble (or notable) links across disparate disciplines and at the same time teach others as we learn together.

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[1] Rewana Ka Nduchwa is an award-winning entrepreneur from Botswana, currently at Fledge, a business accelerator.

sp190220 Designing the XSTREAM press: A smart press for smart teachers

 If I wanted to design a press that works in Africa as well as in America, I’d take a global view and make it competitive with Chinese and Russian press designers.

Cost would be my first target – I’d get the price down to less than $500 and yet make room for a reasonable profit. Plus, in addition to the profit margin, I’d make a rule to provide 5% of each press’ net gain to a fund to grant and send a press to a teacher who doesn’t have the money to buy and ship one.

Start with the rollers of the press. I’d make them of pipe, and the bottom roller would have only enough thickness – perhaps 3/16 or ¼ inch. I’d thread the inside on each end to accommodate an off-the-shelf plug that would require a minimum of machining to make it fit the hub of the driving wheel.

The top roller I’d give a thicker wall – perhaps ½”. It, too, would be threaded on the inside to accommodate a shaft or stub.

All the while I’m thinking about these small changes in what used to be my Halfwood Press, I’d be comparing my thinking procedure to that of a Chinese or Russian designer making a press as part of a STREAM teaching package.

STREAM means augmented STEM by adding an R for Reading and an A for Art through books and art. This will be a press associated with the rudimentary history of STEM, that is, printing – the ancestor of all sciences, technology, engineering and math.

My mind would be blending engineering and art, so I’d incorporate features which have less to do with smart engineering solutions and more to do with art – such as the overall appearance of the press and the back story of how the design got started in my mind.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it is the beauty of my Halfwood Press Design that sold more presses to people for its looks than industrial design features of most etching presses. People paid as much as twice as much for my presses than presses of the same functionality.

There is an entertainment value, too, as the emphasis on printmaking with a hand press is like a performance art. It’s a magical moment when the proof is pulled after the crafts of making, inking, and wiping an etched plate or a collagraph, for example.

When I achieve this, imagine what I could do with a new market, emerging in Africa because of the growing concern of educators in both the sciences and the arts.

It’s likely this demographic is dominated by the X-generation - the demographic cohort following the baby boomers and preceding Millennials. Demographers and researchers typically use birth years ranging from the early-to-mid 1960’s to the early 1980’s.

For example, African educators over 40 are working hard to catch up with developed nations. They do more with less. It’s an old story – by working with available and sometimes cast-off resources, educators in less developed countries have worked near-miraculous results.

They have encouragement, too. Sunny Varkey, for example – in his ‘sixties - sponsors the Global Teaching Prize. It’s a million-dollar award given annually to exemplary teachers and most of these prizes have gone to teachers in developing countries.

As someone who lives a life in a country like the USA of such luxury that we thoughtlessly discard a huge part of our resources (both natural and human resources) I have the benefit of time and money to design an XSTREAM press.

With the help of my friends around America and around the world, I can.