Talent is Overrated II

(see January of 2015 for part I)

In 1964 toward the end of my sophomore year at Occidental, Dean Culley called me into his office to inform me that my grade point average of 1.2 was nearing a milestone. Benjamin Culley, who despised me, was the Dean of Men and taught a course in statistics.  He made no effort to mask the pleasure he took in telling me that without a miraculous reversal it would soon be statistically impossible to raise my GPA to the 2.0 required to graduate.  He added that when I reached this point of no return the college would be obligated to drop me as a student. 

To avoid losing my student deferment and relocating to either Canada or Viet Nam, I began a process of elimination lasting a few months and ending with me listed as an art major. The college's records in those days were mainly printed forms filled out by administrative personnel.  My transcript displayed five handwritten entries in the field labeled “Major”, with a line drawn through the first four.  I had been won over by the fact that art majors could pursue a course of independent study and in particular that class attendance was optional.  I had used some sleight of hand with water colors to do well in my first art course but in the semesters to follow I faced having to work in other disciplines including sculpture, printmaking and figure drawing.  Despite not having any artistic talent to speak of, my work would have to achieve high grades or Uncle Sam would come calling.

Maquette by Jan de Swart

I did well in the sculpture class mainly because I had house sat the previous summer for a local artist.  He worked mostly in wood and cast aluminum but had made one piece with plaster that had gone unnoticed by any magazines or galleries.  The sculpture appeared to be the result of an imaginative technique rather than talent, and although it would be an unabashed rip-off, I was fairly sure I could achieve a similar outcome.  I was unsure of the exact method he had used but I guessed it involved pouring wet plaster into a box full of various sized gourds or Styrofoam balls.  Once the plaster had set, the gourds/balls were obliterated, perhaps by either a kiln or a torch.  I went to G.L. Throop Building Supplies in Pasadena and was told to try Hydro-stone, a material used by dentists that dries quickly and becomes “rock hard”.  To create the interior negative space I decided to use water balloons.  I hauled everything over to my parents’ back patio so that I could sort things out in private.

Plaster rasp

While I was filling the balloons with water I discovered that if they were filled only part way I could wrap and tie them around each other to form an amorphous blob.  I draped a plastic sheet inside a milk crate, lowered in the balloon mass, and poured in the wet Hydro-stone.  I let it sit overnight and dumped it out of the crate the next day.  I used a plaster rasp to shave away the exterior plaster in several spots, eventually reaching the balloons which broke, releasing the water and revealing a hidden interior of intricate and perfectly smooth organic-shaped impressions.  Peering into the sculpture evoked all of the mystery and intrigue that one intuitively feels when exploring an underground cave.    

The Hydro-stone process was similar to my water color shenanigans with the toilet plunger.  The sculpture had been created with little or no control on my part and the random or accidental results were far beyond anything I could have ever done intentionally.  The five sculptures I turned in at the end of the semester looked like I’d spent a hell of a lot more time than the three weeks it took me.  After using a milk crate for the first sculpture, I found containers of different sizes and shapes for the ones that followed.  I chose to mount the five finished pieces vertically as excavated towers, the largest of which weighed in at about 90 pounds.  Best of all, no one was certain exactly how I had done it and I wasn’t talking.

Takach printing press

There was comparatively little deception in my approach to printmaking.  The other students produced prints from wood blocks they had carved or plates they had etched.  The prints were realistic renderings of scenes such as people dining at a sidewalk café or perhaps walking past a windmill.  Since I lacked the ability required for illustration I was forced to take a different route.  Generally, prints were made by inking a plate or wood block, covering it with a piece of paper and rolling it through the press which transferred the image from the plate to the paper. 

Actually a photo but approximates the visual affect
produced by my printing process - image from
alternativephotography.com. 

I did my printmaking late in the evening long after the art building had emptied out.  I would begin by searching all of the waste baskets, including those in the restrooms, looking for items with a range of textures and surfaces such as bits of cloth, wire, string, panty hose, candy wrappers, crumpled paper, empty paint tubes, discarded chewing gum, toothpicks, coins, a broken comb, etc.  I also brought in natural objects that I found around the campus including eucalyptus bark, leaves, twigs, feathers, seed pods, etc. I put the collected items on a board, used a roller to spread inks on them, covered the pile with a mat frame and a piece of paper, and ran it through the press.  I learned not to arrange the items as the best compositions invariably came about by simply dumping the items onto the board.  The mat frame created a rectangular hard-edge border that really made the image jump out.  The border also provided a clean margin at the bottom of the image where I hand printed very neatly in the tiniest letters a print number, title, date and signature.  I had learned from my water color charade that a clever and somewhat snooty title would get you a good grade every time.

Things had been going nicely as I was receiving the grades I needed to stay in school and out of the war.  However, I was going to have to find a way to deal with figure drawing.  This was a traditional discipline that hadn’t yet been contaminated by abstract expressionism.  I actually gave it a brief go at first but my attempts were so horrid I retreated into a depressed funk for days.  I finally became so desperate that I pleaded successfully with my girlfriend to disrobe and lie down on large sheets of newsprint, where using her as a template, I tried to draw on the newsprint with a stick of charcoal that I slid along the contours of her body.  It became quickly obvious that this method was impractical if not impossible to execute for suffice to say, several reasons. 

Fortunately, this ridiculous experiment led to a solution.  I taped 
the paper onto a board, placed it against the wall and used a 
lamp to cast the shadow of my girlfriend against the paper.  This 

Lines lifted from a drawing 
by Antonia Devine

was a dramatic improvement as it (1) greatly reduced the level of distraction inherent with the original approach; (2) created enough space between my girlfriend and the paper in which I could work with my back to her; and (3), provided a more stationary guide to trace uninterrupted by flinching.

However the lines I made with the charcoal, as well as pencil or ink, were all terribly shaky and uneven.  Having cut countless mat frames as a part-time job, I knew I could execute a better line with a mat knife. I tried using one to cut along the silhouette edge and it worked beautifully.  With the tip of the blade slightly buried into the board beneath the newsprint, even if I occasionally hesitated, I was able to cut a line that was consistent, smooth and absent of all the imperfections that came with drawing.  I then placed the newsprint on dark paper, spread apart the two halves created by the cut, and created a line of whatever width I desired that was as pure as a laser could have produced had they existed back then. 

My initial idea was to create accurate outlines of the female form from various angles and poses, then fill in the rest freehand.  I was hoping with the proportions of my girlfriend's body outlined correctly, it might not be so difficult to draw in the rest.  Then it occurred to me that the lines created with the shadow cutting were good enough to stand alone.  After all, it was often said of Picasso and Matisse that what they expressed with a single uninterrupted line was the true measure of their genius.  My technique was definitely outside the constraints of the class assignments but I might get away with it if the work was considered unique and I presented it with enough conviction.  With Johnson and Kissinger repeatedly escalating our involvement in Viet Nam, there was no chance I was going to come up short on conviction.