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Friday, January 7, 2022
Lessons in work and play.
My dad had a strong belief that work was not play and you should not have fun when you are on the job. I think his strong conviction come from the fact that he spent many years without work and struggled to find employment during the depression. He was very demanding and he expected me to work hard and never complain. If I complained he would just create more work for me. His favorite refrain was “stop playing around”. I was expected to come right home after school and do chores before supper. After supper I had to go to my room and do my homework and go to bed. During the school year it was simple work and school. He was a bit more lenient during the summer. I was allowed to play with my friends for a few hours in the late afternoon and sometimes during the long summer evening. However, most of the time I was playing with my brother and taking care of him. When I was about 12 years old my dad put me in charge of mowing a vacant lot next to our house.
I was surprised when my Dad purchased an old gasoline powered mower to make cutting the large lot easier. I had been using a push mower and it took about four hours to cut the grass. He was a very good mechanic and he was proud of his restored mower. He showed me how to start the mower and gave me a lesson on maintenance and safety. I was thrilled with the mower and for the next few months I breezed through the cutting process. The mowing became routine and I started to vary the cutting pattern. I would cut zigzags and circles; it was sort of an early form of crop circles. When my dad returned home late at night he did not check my work until the next morning. I had removed all traces of my patterned cutting and he was proud of my work and was not aware that I was having fun during work.
My creativity proved to be my downfall one hot summer afternoon. I decided to cut my initials into field. I had a great time making the large block letters. When I had finished putting the final touches on the “I” the mower began to sputter and smoke. Apparently, the aggressive use of the mower as a sculpting tool had taken its toll on the refurbished mower. I checked the gas and oil and both tanks were nearly full. I pulled and pulled the starting cord and checked and rechecked the carburetor settings. In a panic I loosened and tightened screws. The final attempt was removing the spark plug. The wrench slipped and I broke off the tip of the plug. I was in deep trouble. I tried to remember my maintenance lessons as the sun set on my “fun project”. I was frantic and my dad would be home soon. I spent a sleepless night knowing that in the morning my dad would see my handy work and I would suffer his wrath. In the morning I went to breakfast. I received a cheery greeting from my mom and a stern question from my father. “Did you finish the mowing” after a long and painful pause, I confessed that I had encounter a little problem. He looked at me and sternly and said “that is what you get for playing around”. I will not bore you with the details of my punishment but I still remember it over sixty-two years later.
It is both strange and prophetic how we remember and react to little dramas in our life. I am thankful for that harsh lesson it just made cherish the fact that throughout my working years I never separated work and play; and I still do a lot of “playing around”.
Thursday, January 6, 2022
Dream Car Contest
In 1953, my freshman year at Belleville Township High School, I spent many hours drawing cars. The car culture was in full swing and all young boys were dreaming of sleek custom “hot rods”. My ideas were influenced by the futuristic cars illustrated in Popular Mechanics magazine. My Grandpa had a huge collection of the magazines in his workshop. It was the first place I went when we visited him in Coulterville, Illinois. I would study the picture intently and dream of building a car. There was an ad in one of the magazines about the Fisher Body car model contest. I sent for the information and received all the details of the contest. My favorite part was the schematic . I was able to locate one on the internet and it still gives me the sense of awe I felt as a teenager. I like plans and schematics. I still fill my drawings with symbols, lines and shapes that look like diagrams.
I was really eager to start the build but money was tight and wood and paint for the model would be hard to buy. Also, I did not have the proper model tools or space for working. I did manage to get some wood but it was not the smooth pine wood that was suggested and I tried carving it with a pen knife. I would work many frustrating hours on the back stoop of our small Gunnison pre-fabricated house on Wabash Avenue in Belleville, Illinois. Sitting on the concrete and carving was problematic and dangerous. I suffered many cuts and scraped knees. Well, to make a long story short, I never finished the model. I still think about that failure. I had expectations of creating an award winning model and I would have a special assembly at school; all the students would marvel at my achievement.
I have come to realize that the car debacle was a learning experience and I incorporated it into my life and teaching. I have had many unfinished projects and many of my students struggled to finish projects. It sounds quaint and old fashion to say that you learn from your failures, but I think it is true.
Mechanical Drawing
I do not know it I have the necessary skills to write a book about art education but I have been compiling small snippets about my career in education and sharing them on Facebook. Tracing the twists and turns of my seventy-five year journey has been a enlightening experience.
Of course, art teachers, course work, family and the creative process have been my main influences. When you dig deeper, small things reveal a complex network of influences. In high school, I was an average student hoping to go to college. The men in my family were laborers, farmers, railroad workers and mine workers. I was encouraged to obtain a skill. Most students in my situation enrolled in “shop classes”. During the 1950’s the vocational education department was popular. Auto shop classes and drafting classes were very popular. One of my favorite classes was Mechanical drawing. Projects were drawing on light green paper with specific borders and precise lettering which were called “plates” Neat rows of helvetica letters indicated the title of each projects. Clean drawings with tracing paper cover sheets were very important. I remember the Thomas E. French textbook illustrations and the wonder of isometric drawing (the word seems prophetic ). I was a good students and learned to be neat and precise. That element is very evident in my work today and do enjoy detailed work with no erasures.
Mr. Harpstribe was my teacher at Bellevile West High School. 1953-57
Belleville Township High School East Variety Show
I began teaching at Belleville East in the fall of 1966. The school was still under constructions and many of the classrooms were not ready; it was a new school without traditions. Ever school activity that first year would be the starting point for developing the schools image. Before I was hired, he community voted on the mascot and school name. It was decided that the new school would be called The Belleville East High School Lancers. No one had any idea what the mascot would look like. After considerable discussion, it was determined that the mascot should be a knight, I guess it was because knights used a lance. I could never quite see the connection. In my mind, the image was a British lancer. I later found out the graphic designer hired to create the school logo, use a Portuguese Lancer wine bottle label for the type face which really confused everything. The final logo design was a shield with lances.
With the name a logo in place the principal began searching for new activities for the fledgling school. He approach me one day and asked it I would like to organize a school talent show. On my application, I listed my participation in a college review presented by the Blackfriars a theatrical fraternity. I told him I would give it a try and I quickly enlisted the help of the new music instructor, Jim McHaney. We decided to call it a Variety Show with a subtitle for each year. Jim and I worked on sixteen shows together and became good friends. The work was divided up and I took charge of the stage, publicity and house. Jim work with staging the acts, sound and lighting. The lines of responsibility were loosely drawn and many activities overlapped.
One of the major problems was the lack of performance space. The school did not have a theatre only a lecture center that was the new trend in school architecture during the nineteen sixties. It did have a small concrete floor stage. However, there was no wing space, dressing rooms, lighting, or sound equipment. We decided that we would use the gymnasium as a performance center. Trying to work around the gym scheduling was very difficult. We would have to create a stage complete with lighting on a very tight schedule. The Easter holiday was our choice. The spring break was Thursday to the Monday after Easter and we were able to use the gym for the remainder of the week. The tryouts were held in the music room several weeks before we started work on the stage. We selected several acts and divided them into two groups. The acts were responsible for their own rehearsals. Early on Thursday morning, the first day of spring break we started converting the gym into a performance area. We set everything up during and rehearsed half the show on Tuesday and half on Wednesday, On Thursday we had a dress rehearsal and Friday evening we presented the show. Everything was cleaned up an the gym was ready for classes on Monday. We followed that format for fifteen years. It was ten twelve hour days plus the tryouts and planning. The first show was a success and as the years passed it became an important school activity with large audiences. As it grew we rented a portable stage, lighting and created back stage area complete with curtain.The bleachers on one side of the gym were used for seating. Our trade mark was a group of students wearing candy box costumes and singing “Let’s go out to the lobby” and leading the crowd to the lobby for refreshments. My art classes created acts each year that pushed the envelope of what is talent. One such act is hard to visualize, imagine a student in a Hormel Spam can costume signing “Mr. Spam man” ( to the tune of Mr. Sandman} featuring four back up singers, performing Detroit style, dressed in wedding dresses. At intermission Mr. Spam man served spam samples and signed autographs. I don’t know what it meant but you could not forget it. We also had a panel of judges and trophies were award after the show. We had local celebrities as judges and in keeping with my off beat humor, I had a pro wrestler as a judge one year. Every one looked forward to the special judge each year. My last year directing the Variety show was 1984. I had a busy schedule doing technical direction for two or three plays a year plus my department head duties and I just did not have enough time. The show hung on for a few more years but eventually died out. Belleville East is now a large school with a new theatre and a large drama department. I would like to think those early years helped East develop into a fine school.
The first show in 1968 was called Lancer Laugh-Out a homage to the popular television show Laugh-in. Over the next fifteen years, with a two year break in 1979-80, the names of the show would be taken from pop culture. The name of the shows and years are:
1968 Lancer Laugh-Out
1969 Gotcha
1970 Do your own thing
1971 Hey don’t that look like someone we seen before
1972 All in the family
1973 Tell me what it is and I will tell you what to feed it
1974 Thanks, I needed that
1975 Aaargh!
1976 Hooray.
1977 Gong show
1978 Friday night live
1981 We’re back
1982 B.T.H.S.E. TV
1983 This is your night Charles G. McCoy
1984 Puttin’ on the Ritz
1986 Happy 20 th. Birthday East
1987 That’s the ticket
Wednesday, January 5, 2022
Still life just like real life
Painting is from the Governor French Academy permanent collection circa 1970.
Acrylic, ink collage. 4' X 4' on paperboard.
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