Book Description

My life, from my birthday to the last decade of 1900s, is a spectrum of events both good and bad as I follow T. S. Elliot’s lines, “We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time.” Growing up on my father’s farm, there was plenty of exploration, but I never went back to the farm. Far from it! My explorations took me where no teacher in my main field, which is printmaking, had gone because I was hired at 24 by a major research university where its campus services gave me a head start exploring electronic arts and computers, I could blend with teaching printmaking. Ironically, while these brought opportunities, there were hidden limitations. In the 1980s I gambled our home to take us on a vast sabbatical research project for the university. We returned to find the school corrupt, and so it ended my career. Fortunately, I married well. My high school sweetheart, Lynda, stayed with me even on my wayward ventures. In addition she brought two fine daughters to our lives. And had it not been for her ability to restore our property, my exploring would have ended forever. Because, when the art school closed its door, others opened. Everything I learned in nineteen years at the UW prepared me to continue privately. By 1990, I was on cloud nine and the Internet was within my grasp. These are the words from one of two volumes I illustrated with a thousand pictures. What autobiography of a teaching artist’s life would be complete without pictures? Not only my art, but my students’, and from collaborations with diverse artists, crafts people, designers, and writers. Plus QR codes! It is for anyone who loves a good read about teaching art as I was known for in Seattle, but also about an old professor’s family, friends, art patrons, and former students who made it possible. It continues in Volume 2. Volume 1 takes this farmboy to the approach of the information superhighway.