August 10, 2003. I wish I had a video of that conversation I had with Jim the
other day. He’s an artist and craftsman at a community college, and
he’s been around this area doing arts, crafts and education works as
long as I have. When he asked me if I knew about intentional communities,
I must have dropped my jaw. Jim was the first person I’d had a
conversation with who asked me if I was interested in intentional
communities before I brought up that term, intentional communities.
Emeralda, is, after all, my “code name” for the intentional
community of my lifelong dream—a place where artists, crafts people and
designers live and work in an atmosphere of teaching, learning, research,
practice and service. Actually, I hesitate to tell people about it because
it sounds like a monastery, and shades of the spiritual seem to emanate
from my lofty view of the enterprise.
But when Jim brought it up, it didn’t have that quality, altogether.
He described an intentional community plan he’d been part of which was
composed mostly of art professors in the northern part of the Puget Sound
region—places like Bellingham, Oak Harbor and Whatcom. He went on to say
the instigators were, many of them, thinking of retirement as it
approached them, and were wondering how they’d maintain the kind of
community their campus had provided in their most active years.
I’m eager to make measurable progress toward an intentional
community, but I think my vision is going to differ from that of people
who are similar to me in age and background. I left the institution such a
long time ago that it’s only a memory now; I’ve been living a life of
disenfranchisement for so long (as far as university life is concerned)
that my picture of an intentional community is one of an active resource
pool that, in effect, strives to replace the traditional campus and, in
particular, its art departments.
Despite that we—Jim and I—might have many stories and complaints
about “the system”, I feel like people who stayed on campus (when I
“retired” at 43) until their ‘60s and ‘70s may not be in touch
with what an intentional community can be other than a safe haven for
retired college art professors. I don’t want a safe haven; I’d feel
like I had created the pasture that I’ve been put out to. I want to be
in the center of the action in the 21st Century, not an
artifact from the 20th and 19th century when the art
education paradigms gave us what a traditional art department is today.
Thus, Emeralda is an intentional community for mature devotees to
higher education who want to multiply their effectiveness over what it had
been in the traditional campus. This is how I envision the intentional
community: A virtual on-line community for teaching and learning, research
and practice coupled with a product an service for fine arts education
on-line. It is, in effect, a fine arts college on-line that produces
hybrid courses to augment the current offerings of colleges and
universities (and high schools) worldwide.
That’s a bold vision, I think; but why settle for a modest vision? On the
subject of intentional communities I’ve looked into so far, most are
merely a group’s solution to land prices, development projects and
retirement community planning. As yet I haven’t seen one that is
aligned with my vision and goals. That is, I intend to be a lifelong
learner and, if I am to be a valuable resource, a lifelong teacher, then I
have to take
my idea further. I’d like to continue teaching after I’m dead!
This notion is not without precedent; innumerable artists, crafts people and
designers have left us with their legacy from which uncounted people can
draw ideas and lessons. Sometimes we can enjoy the music of composers
written hundreds of years ago; not only listen to them, but enjoy the
intellectual and emotional background of the artists’ lives thanks to
scholarly and artistic research. Most of this has come through
media—from books to recordings to movies and, today, Digital Versatile
Discs, or DVD.
My Emeralda vision is not so much a solution to housing and
development problems treated in an economic fashion, but more like a
“company town” devoted to making art education more accessible than it
is today for people of all ages. I haven’t found my community (I call it
a Communiversity sometimes), though I felt I had come close to it
as a college professor.
Now, with most of my career in the 20th
Century art world behind me, I want to glean what’s useful to carry
forward into the 21st Century and make it accessible, together
with means to maintain its integrity and, finally, be reimbursed in
proportion to what value my legacy may have.
Maybe I’ll have another opportunity to talk with Jim
about my vision; or, in the same way that The Boeing Company made their
777 a virtual reality before it was a true aircraft, Jim and I will be
able to create a “virtual” Emeralda years before we see the physical
existence of this intentional community. |
Bill
H. Ritchie is an Itinerate Professor of Art in Seattle. He taught 19
years at the UW as a professor of art, traditional printmaking and media
arts. Resigning at 43 to start his own learning, research and production
company, he created Emeralda in 1992, a game strategy he likens to a
fantasy region accessible only by computer. He invented rules-of-play and
an operating system he wants to be an online interactive game. He’s
immersed himself in a virtual promised land in the age of digital
reproduction.
He writes for the benefit of discipline, using a PDA when he's
wandering around and a desktop PC to organize his essays. He has a
thousand or more saved, which you can see listed on the ten
"islands" on the Web. An example is www.seanet.com/~ritchie/vizine.html,
on the island of RIISMA in the Emeralda Region.
For further information via e-mail: Ritchie@seanet.com,
and see the professional Web site at www.seanet.com/~ritchie.
The company’s name is Emeralda Works, 500 Aloha #105, Seattle, WA 98109. This article’s statistics are: 1052
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A Land Like Emeralda. |