Sharing My Story

The church's college/career group did present one opportunity
for leadership. Casting around for program ideas I suggested
having representatives from the various Christian campus ministries
appear before the group and share what they do and discuss
opportunities for involvement. I contacted the various local
reps from Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, the Navigators,
the Baptist Student Union and Campus Crusade for Christ (all
who were active on Western's campus at that time) and they
came and gave talks and answered questions about their
respective ministries. Campus Crusade was the easiest to
get in touch with as one staff member Lloyd Hawkins was
the college Sunday School teacher at Immanuel.

This lead to Lloyd asking me to accompany him on a personal
witnessing trip one day on Western's campus. He used the
Four Spiritual Laws booklet as a tool in a "random" witnessing
situations. While we didn't see any results from that time this
method of sharing Christian faith interested me. This happened
as I was winding up my senior year and looking forward to my
graduation in the summer of 1970. Campus Crusade offered
one week evangelism and discipleship training seminars in
Southern California during that time to train their student
volunteers. Lloyd "challenged" me to consider going to one
of those seminars and after some consideration decided to
accepted the invitation. I thought at the time it would be good
chance to find out more about Campus Crusade and have a
nice time in Southern California (beaches and Disneyland).

Shortly after graduating that Summer I drove down to San
Bernardino with several other local students and participated
in the seminar at CCC headquarters at Arrowhead Springs.
This seminar proved to be life changing. Campus Crusade
had a worldwide vision that fit those turbulent times. This
seminar spelled out Campus Crusade's strategy for evangelism
and discipleship and the seminar participants had several
times during the week to practice evangelism. They took us
by the busload to Southern California beaches (Huntington
and Manhattan) and we conducted religious surveys with the
offer of optional sharing of the gospel through the Four
Spiritual Laws. This was an easy though somewhat scary
way to share the basics of the Christian gospel with total
strangers. Overall I found this seminar to be very positive
experience and was predisposed to continue my association
with Campus Crusade. There was a real sense that Campus
Crusade could be a real change agent (certainly not the
only one) for good in a world erupting with revolution.

I decided upon returning to Washington to take some
post-graduate courses and become heavily involved in
the Campus Crusade outreach ministry on Western's Campus.

Being reserved by nature my social life didn't particular prosper
during high school or college. Being a fairly average college student
I found time to doing my part-time job, do college home work and
go to church. Since I lived at home and commuted to college and
work time for extracurricular activities was very limited. Perhaps
the major church activity at that time was the College/Career group
that met at Pastor Gerald "Jerry" Wilson's (then minister at
Immanuel Bible Church) house. Every Sunday night after church
the college age young people would gather at his home and play
pool or table tennis (they had a table downstairs) and have a
devotional and prayer time with refreshments. Pastor Wilson
was a World War II Navy vet and was a very dynamic pulpit
speaker and real love for young people. He had been a youth
minister with the Firs Conference Ministry before coming to
Immanuel. While these meetings were nice they weren't
particularly memorable as they were rather disconnected
from my interests and daily life.

Perhaps the most interesting thing in my life during the early
college years were the articles I was writing for Mike Robertson's
fanzine Concussion (1967-1969). Those articles gave me an outlet
for discussing comics even though those articles related to
obscure characters (and comics) from the 1940s. Mike Robertson
was a fan who lived in Maple Valley, Washington who published
a friendly chatty mimeographed fanzine with contributors some
of whom went on to become comics industry professionals. I even
met Mike during that time as I traveled to a small comics convention
(really a comics trading meeting) held at someone's house south of
Seattle. This was actually an exciting time in comics as Marvel was
expanding with people like Jim Sternako and Neal Adams at DC
(and Marvel) who were revolutionizing comic story telling. Of course,
the Batman TV program was happening at this time. Pastor Wilson's
son, Dan who was my age invited my good friend Bob LaRievere and
I to do a Batman and Robin skit for a youth group one evening. My
mother made me a handsome Robin costume and Bob (as Batman)
and I stumbled through a very silly skit. It was fun but I was glad it
was over with because I couldn't wear my glasses (being very near
sighted) and was literally stumbling over not only my lines but
everything else (this may have actually happened in my senior year
in high school). This is a good, fun if goofy memory.

As I look back on my college years a few things pop to mind.
My custodial job at the Parkview Elementary School, Ecology
and biology field trips and the Senior Art show. While I switched
my major from biology to art I continued taking biology courses
like Entomology and Ecology. Each of these courses had a several
day field trip where the class when as a group to to different
locations to study and collect specimens. The Entomology courses
were taught by Dr Gerald F. Kraft. Entomology was one of the college
courses that I greatly enjoyed and actually did very well in them.
Perhaps the irony of my entomology courses was that I pulled As
out of them while actually failing a concurrent Botany course.
However I later retook the same Botany course (from a different
instructor) and made a B in it. As a kid (mentioned earlier) I had
developed a fascination with insects and this was a course that
helped me understand the their classification and how to
identify them. One highlight of the course was that I bought
in tree detritus which yielded a species of spring tail that had
not been found in that part of Washington before. That almost
made me some kind of hero. Dr Kraft was the leader of the field
trip to central Washington (in Okanogan County). We spent several
days roughing it, camping, living in tents and collecting different
varieties of insects. Quite an enjoyable adventure. The Ecology
field trip was to two of the small islands in the San Juan group
called Sucia Island and Matia Island). My job was to collect as
many different varieties of lichen as possible. I think I ended up
with several dozen different varieties while other people were
doing things like wet suit diving around the island exploring the
depths of Puget Sound. Overall both courses and field trips were
highlights of my college tenure which proved mostly routine.

The Senior art show exhibited the work of the grduating senior
art majors. I had become fascinated with impressionist,
neo-impressionism and Fauvism. I became enamored of
these movements and practiced painting in those styles.
The work that I showed was from my neo-Fauvist period
with bright often violently clashing primary colors. I worked
in acrylic mostly rather than oil. The exhibited painting was
one of my father and mother who were submerged in a bizarre
riot of conflicting bright—no loud and vibrating colors. I actually
gave it to my parents who displayed in their home for years after.
Looking back on it they must have really loved me as I sure this
style was not one they were crazy about. Over the years I've
collected books on the French Impressionist and still hold
them in high regard.

As I look back on my college art experience I felt a certain degree
of disquiet and dissatisfaction with my college art career. About
half way through my sophomore year I changed my major from
Biology to Art (Biology became my minor). The reason for that
was that I wasn’t doing well in chemistry which was vital to any
biology major. As I looked at my college art education I see mostly
wasted time and effort with a few bright spots.

First the positives. Perhaps the most engaging art courses I took
were those in art history. The instructors who taught art history,
by and large, had a passion and a clear understanding of how different
trends or schools of thought in art influenced and impacted each
other and how these art trends reflected what was happening in
society and culture as a whole. So much of my experience in art
before the time was through cartooning and comics. These courses
and instructors opened up whole new worlds and types of thinking
about art. It didn’t diminish my interest in comics or cartooning
but it did provide an overview and structure of what was happening
or had happened in the larger world of art and gave a perspective
on how cartooning fit into a much larger whole. Comics, at that time,
were looked down on as a very poor step sister of the arts—a notion
that is changing over the decades since then. I learned about the great
classic art of Greece and Rome, the medieval period, the Renaissance
with Leonardo and Michelangelo, the Baroque period, Rembrandt,
the Neoclassic, Romantic movements, Impressionism, Post-impressionism,
cubism, surrealism. and so much more. It was a fascinating learning
experience which enriched my intellectual life.

However, the studio section of my art education was severely lacking.
I d0n’t feel that the basic foundations of art was taught with any rigor.
The 1960s was a time of rebellion (the hippie/drug movement,
Vietnam War protects, etc.). The art instructors I had were mostly
in their forties or fifties and were artists who matured during the heyday
of abstract expressionism and their art styles were heavily influenced
by that movement. Even at that time abstract expressionism was
on the wane and these men were struggling in their art on how to move
beyond abstract expressionism. Abstract expressionism was the ultimate
revolt against representationalism in art. Abstract expressionism broke
or ignored all the rules of classical drawing and painting. Rules of composition
and perspective, use of color and light, real form were all looked down on
as hopelessly old fashioned and out-dated. Within a few years pop art and
super realism would create a rebellion against abstract expressionism and
the tradition rules of art would return. However I was caught in this period
where the forms of abstract expressionism were still dominant with my
instructors. It seems as if they weren’t interested in teaching classical art
basics and why should they if all these things were hopelessly passe.

Perhaps I am being to hard on my former instructors. Perhaps I should
have chosen my college with greater care. Perhaps I should have thought
through what I wanted to do much more carefully than I did. Perhaps I
was expecting more out of these instructors than they had the capacity to give.

However having wrote that I still believe and feel that these instructors
should have taught the basic foundational principles of classic art. I believe
that when these rules are broken that should come from a thorough knowledge
or them not an ignorance of them. For example, I learned about perspective
in a junior high mechanical drawing class. However, I didn’t carry these
perspective principles over into my art. I never made the connection or
was it pointed out to me when I was taking my college courses. Perspective
in art is something I had to learn or relearn long after college. I really don’t
remember any of my college instructors talking about let alone teaching
perspective as an artistic discipline.

Cartoonist Mike Manley recently wrote, “It was all the “draw as you feel”
school of creative,,,You know, “I’m am an artist. You can’t label me and make
me have to learn things like perspective. That’s holding down my creativity!”
(From Draw #15, 2008, p. 63). I agree with Manley even though his
experience is a few years later than my own. However it does seem as
if a more traditional way of teaching art is returning at least in some
schools of higher education.