Uribe

The motivation I had for staying in graduate school came from conversations with friends, and obituaries in the Occidental alumni magazine.  This was how I discovered which of the kids I had gone to high school and college with had died in Viet Nam.  I'd never liked school and had gone to way too much of it for my taste.  However, every few weeks I would hear of another casualty, so I kept at it.  As long as I continued with school, I maintained my student deferment and avoided the draft.  School was obviously by far the lesser of the two evils.

The closest and most inexpensive grad school was Cal State Los Angeles.  At Oxy I was used to 8-15 outspoken, smart-ass kids in a classroom.  At Cal State, the graduate classes were 2-3 times the size and held in the evening so employed adults could attend.  The Cal State students had worked all day, had little desire to engage in discussion, and were eager to go home as soon as possible.  The first course I took was architectural design.  The class was made up mostly of people that had spent several years in a commercial art field and were trying to add a Master of Fine Arts to their resumes.

I had to admire the people in these classes.  They had found a foothold somehow in the commercial art world, had used their ability to support themselves and their families, and were now working on advancing their careers.  The closest I'd come to a relevant job was framing 2 dozen prints for the college President's wife.  I became an art major because attendance was not mandatory, and had no discernible talent.  I'd spent the last 4 years at a private school with stuffed shirts and rich kids discussing "Why is there air?"   The people attending these classes were trying to do something positive with their lives.  I was trying to avoid becoming a grease stain in a far-off jungle.

The first assignment for the architectural design course was to design and build a scale model of a building that performed a public service; such as a library, a museum or a senior citizens center.  I was quite confident that I could do a nice job on the model.  This stemmed from the print framing I had done for the President's wife.  I had become so proficient at cutting mat board, that kids at Oxy would ask me to mat their work.  Mat board would be an ideal material for constructing a model.  As for the design of the building, I thought I'd go for something unexpected – a prison.  It had many advantages.  Political realities would rule out any sort of flamboyant approach.  This meant clean straight lines which makes working with mat board easy.  The purpose of the building is to keep people from getting out, therefore only a minimal number of windows and doors would be required.  This also greatly reduced the effort to construct the model.  In the end, I passed on windows altogether and went with skylights and atrium courts.  Since it was a prison, it made no sense to surround it with miniature people, cars, trees and landscaping.  After all, tax payers want criminals to be put away in a bleak and barren environment.  A prison should be plopped down in the middle of Death Valley with nothing around it for miles.

I spent 100% of my time on the structure since I was omitting the peripheral details even though they were required for the assignment.  I even went to the library for the first time in years to see what I could learn about how prisons were built, security and safety concerns and living conditions.  Cal State has a fair amount of material since many courses are offered in criminal justice and law enforcement.  I found enough information to guide me in designing a practical and secure arrangement of the interior spaces. 

Arranging spaces for things such as an infirmary, visiting area, housing, administration is governed primarily by proximity.  Simple logic dictates that certain spaces need to be close together while others need to be far removed from one another.  Once the proximity issues are resolved the amount of area for each space is driven by the number of inmates and staff.  From there the structure pretty much just encloses the spaces with allowances made for functional needs such as surveillance, natural light, maintenance, power, etc.  A utilitarian approach with not much in the way of panache but it's a prison for Christ's sake.

The evening the models were due, each class member went to the front of the class and spent 5 minutes presenting their work.  There was a striking visual difference between my model and all of the others.  My model was completely white with some light gray partitions all due to the fact that the model and landscape were 100% mat board.  The other models were a visual barrage of materials, colors, textures, windows, doors, benches, sidewalks, foliage and Lilliputian figures and autos.  My model by comparison looked like a space ship for albinos.

When it was my turn to present my model, I felt that I needed to be very convincing as to why my work had omitted things required by the assignment.  I stressed the importance of the functionality of the structure and refused to bother with what I considered to be irrelevant trimmings.  I went a little overboard making my case for the pure stark building destined for a barren plot of land.  It was an arrogant, egotistical, over-the-top imitation of Frank Lloyd Write doing his holier-than-thou routine. The class was very quiet.  The instructor was Professor Uribe and he had chosen to sit in the back.  When I stopped spouting off he raised his hand like he was in grade school.

I said, "Yes"

Uribe said, "Is it okay if we ask questions?'

I burst out laughing.  Prior to this I had no inkling of what a great guy Uribe was.  The two of us had a good laugh but the rest of the class was strangely silent.  I didn't know if they didn't know what was going on, were bored, annoyed, or just wanted to get home.  I grew to be friends with Uribe, took more classes from him, and asked him to be my faculty advisor for the MFA degree I would never finish.

It wasn't until the next semester that I began to get a handle on the why the other members of the class seemed disengaged and non-responsive.  I took my second class from Uribe, this one was advertising design.  The first assignment was to design the graphics and text for a poster or billboard.  The objective of the poster or billboard was to sway eligible voters to cast their ballot as either "Yes" or "No" on a proposition.  There were two issues to chose from – gun control or polygamy.  Each student was free to present a position for or against the issue of their choice.  We were given time to work on it and then present it at class.

When the posters were presented there were 27 that dealt with gun control and 1 (mine) that took on polygamy.  The 27 posters were almost identical.  They all had a close-up image of a handgun with the barrel end pointing out toward the viewer, and printed under the barrel were the words "VOTE NO ON GUNS".  I took this to mean that this happens when people have important things in their lives such as families, employment, friends, and mortgages and are just going to school to get their ticket punched.  They give the best of themselves to their real lives and just go through the motions to get through school.  Who could blame them?  I on the other hand was just treading water, looking for something to occupy my time while I outfoxed the U.S. Selective Service System.

I went to the front of the class and put up my poster.  My poster had a solid red silhouette of 4 female heads against a flat white background.  Each silhouetted female head had a black handlebar moustache.  The bottom of the poster displayed the words "BRHAMS' LULLABYE IN 4-PART HARMONY?"

Uribe looked at my poster and asked, "Did you take one of the two issues, or did you go off the reservation again?"

I said, "I followed the assignment",

Uribe, still looking directly at my poster said, "Which issue is this?"

I said, "Polygamy".

Uribe, "Really?  Okay, is it pro or con?"

I said, "Well give it a little time.  My idea was that people would be curious just like you were when you first saw it.  By seeing additional billboards, a person's curiosity would grow and when they do decipher the message it will have more impact".

I explained that I had thought long and hard as to what there was about polygamy that really got under people's skins.  I had concluded that the forced marriage of under-age brides while alarming does not occur in all polygamist families.  However, the traditional sense of motherhood would be undermined in every such family.  The 4 mustached females are a barbershop quartet.  The caption points out how polygamy destroys the accepted tradition of mother and child.

Uribe continued looking at my poster for a few more seconds.  Then he said, "I need some coffee".