Rusty and I have been teaching together for 28 years. When I first met
Rusty he looked like the guitar player for Janis Joplin’s band, Big
Brother and the Holding Company. Here’s a photo of Rusty
and me taken in 1979 at Hancock. We are getting a head start on our
comments. As this photograph makes perfectly clear, I was way younger
than Rusty when I began teaching at Commonwealth, and I continue to
remain so today.
Rusty has been “up north” in Yankee country for almost 45 years, and
yet, both in and out of the classroom he continues to be a Southern
Gentleman. For two years I was Rusty’s printmaking student. I would ask
him the same dopey questions again and again. He would reframe them for
me, always encouraging, always courteous, and ever generous. Rusty is a
patient man and it’s a good thing too because Commonwealth already has
two excitable short adults in the visual art department.
Walk into any one of Rusty’s classes and you’ll hear students asking
him a million unrelated questions. It’s like watching fleas jump off a
dog, with Rusty remaining calm at the very center. He’ll pick one
question and respond to it, and if you listen very carefully he’ll tell you
the secret of how to make great art, and I pass this on to you all today: “Try it
and lets see what happens.” A certain more rigid ceramics teacher might
say, “You want to wedge coffee grounds into that clay, are you crazy? “
Rusty’s pin-hole photographs are filled with mystery and romance. His
images morph from one object into another, turning our familiar world
upside down. Are we looking at something ancient or something modern? And this is the beauty of Rusty’s teaching. He is able to
serve up the fundamentals of printmaking and photography while
encouraging his student’s to indulge themselves with the passion of
making art personal.
I’m blessed with having Rusty to turn to when my latest brilliant
idea goes bad. He’s optimistic, a rare thing for an artist. I cherish
the fact that my dear friend and I will continue to grow older
together, climbing up five flights of stairs to our studio, in a
community that has nourished us.
Walk into any one of Rusty’s classes and you’ll hear students asking
him a million unrelated questions. It’s like watching fleas jump off a
dog, with Rusty remaining calm at the very center. He’ll pick one
question and respond to it, and if you listen very carefully he’ll tell you
the secret of how to make great art, and I pass this on to you all today: “Try it
and lets see what happens.” A certain more rigid ceramics teacher might
say, “You want to wedge coffee grounds into that clay, are you crazy? “