Sharing My Story

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.