My First Day at ArtsPort
The third year of living copiously
©1998
1369 Words
3 Page(s)
Filename: ap981215 My First Day at ArtsPort.docx
Preface
I'm not back where I started. As I entered my Cell--it crossed my mind that I didn't know for sure if it was Cell A1 or merely Cell 1, randomly or purposely selected from the 24 that are available. I'd been thinking, as I executed my rites, that the great image of the Emeralda Region might be the size of a ten-foot high wall, and I wondered how many steps it would take, in magnifications, to zoom in from it. Ten magnifications? Four?
In a few more minutes, rites over (are they really over, ever?) I was entering my and I heard my conversation playing back to me. Yesterday I spoke with an old friend who had been with me in that other prison they call the University of Washington. I made a kind of confession to him, choosing my words carefully because it was a telephone call. He could not see my face or read my eyes. I wanted to be truthful, but not imply more than an essential truth I had come to during the past month.
I started by commenting on Michael Price, who had been the manager, I think, of the Templeton Fund. I heard recently that it was Price, not Sir John Templeton, who was responsible for the fund's legendary success. About Price I heard the comment, "There's hardly any fund manager like Price, who put more into the companies that he invested in than most managers." In other words, he really got to know those companies. I visualized Price, getting to know Telefono de Mexico by learning Spanish, visiting Mexico frequently and learning all about telephony in that country and the culture of its people. I thought about Price weighing the effects of international trade development and NAFTA, new technologies, and so forth.
I know nothing more about Michael Price, but my friend on the other end of our telephone connection said, "Well, Michael Price is all over out there." I took this to mean that not only was Michael Price still active in the Fund management game, but also that my friend was paying more attention to mutual funds than I suspected. Momentarily, I was tempted to reopen my plans for an investment club for artists, but I let it go. I wanted to use Price as a comparison, so I described how people make investments in other people.
When I heard what was said about Michael Price, I told my friend, I thought how similar this was to my own history. Except, of course, I was not a mutual fund manager, but I was a teacher, a professor teaching college art classes. The students, in this comparison, were the "companies." When I taught them something, I was investing something in them. I was not teaching because it was my job and I was doing what someone told me I was supposed to do. I wasn't maintaining some kind of machine the manufactured college degree-holders. I was unconsciously investing what I had learned into the experiences and relationships of those people, the students who met in my classes.
"That was a mistake," I told my friend.
And he said, "I don't think it was the wrong thing to do." He said that without deliberation. He said it immediately, as though he understood what I meant, and easily. Then I explained that I think it was a mistake because a teacher should not be so involved with his students' lives--not the way Michael Price was involved in "his" companies. The famous remark by Henry Ford flashed into my mind: "Put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket!" If my teaching career was more than a job, what else was it besides an investment?
This telephone conversation was the most important one I had yesterday, that last day of Interval, before I was to start again on a Year of Living Copiously. The need to call my friend was strongly felt in my mind. I had completed a series of twelve pieces of the map of Emeralda Region using the scanner that he had loaned me. As it took shape on my computer screen, I thanked him over and over in my mind. Why not call him? And I did. Now I am at ArtsPort--the first of a six-day Residence Stay, after which I will be moved on to E'Studios (where they are keeping the twelve parts of that map).
"Did you hear that Meyerson-Nowinski closed?" my friend asked me. That gallery that seemed to have so much promise was going the way that so many galleries have gone.
"Oh, art world gossip!" I interjected. And we both laughed, but I should not have laughed about it. In my book, Art of Selling Art, I had commented how gallery closures are like factory shutdowns--they stall artists' in their striving to achieve a livelihood. How many artists will be at loose ends with this gallery's closure? A few of the artists were in my classes when I was a teacher. What good was my teaching, now?
In the world of Michael Price, when a company shuts down, the workers are retrained, sometimes, or they find jobs in other companies that do something of the same kind of work. There are organizations, like Jones, Christian and Gray (?) (on Bainbridge Island) that provide counseling and retrenchment services. The number of artists that are let go every year due to gallery closures is too small to calculate, using industry measures. Art, after all, never merged with business and industry, so artists cannot obtain the kind of help they might need from time to time.
Today, as I wrap up this writing rite, I think about whether my friend or my own opinion is correct. Was it a bad idea to get so involved in my students' lives that I am still, after thirty years, interested in what they are doing? Is it wrong to imagine how they might come back together--those who want to--and be in a class-like setting again to learn new skills? Even if I were still at the University, and had created classes that kept up with the changes in the art world, or the world in general, would they enroll in Masters' programs? I doubt it.
Or, was my friend correct? He, after all, was one of those students. Here I am today, enjoying the benefits of a fine scanner that is allowing me to envision my beautiful map of Emeralda Region, and to delight in it as it flashed on my screen. While I exercised I looked at the image, flanked on each side of the computer screen by what appeared to be twenty gray stones of a wall. Prison walls, I thought, but I listened to a tape at the same time, and Jim Rohn said, "Well-defined dreams are not fuzzy. Wishes are fuzzy. To have your dreams pull you, your dreams must be vivid." Perhaps, without my having invested in him, long ago, I would not now have this scanner. Or, more importantly, I might have a scanner, but nothing to scan.
About the Author: Bill Ritchie wants to teach teachers how he thinks printmaking should be taught, learned, practiced, researched and be served in the age of digital reproduction. He taught 20th Century printmaking and media arts and retired early to start a learning, research and production company (Emeralda Works) to be a teaching company for 21st Century printmakers, blending printmaking and digital arts. The method he invented and is applying to patent is code-named Emeralda: Learn Printmaking Online (ELPO) combining four elements: A curriculum, database, mini-etching press, and a digital game-based interface. Inquiries are invited.