PART 3 ***** ART AWAKENING. (How I almost quit art school, if not for TWO great mentors who revived my love of creation.

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THE FUNNY STICKS (1966)

The first moments of art school were disorienting, to say the least. Suddenly I was sitting in a large classroom with kids much younger than myself, who were fresh out of high school. I was the grand old man of twenty-two, a father with two kids. One teacher, Mrs. Murelius, a woman of about sixty, explained to the class that she was tough and didn’t tolerate any “funny business,” so we’d better pay attention or she would flunk the whole lot of us! Hearing this was especially frightening, considering that I had half of my Freshman units (9 units) tied up with her studio classes.

I had just jumped into the fray, and without having come through the usual ranks of high school art education I floundered. While all the other art students in the class nodded their heads as the teacher spoke about Space, Texture, Form, Line, Content, I sat there stiffly, not understanding, but not wanting to reveal my ignorance. I was scared that once again I would prove to be the dumbbell I knew so well from a lifetime of screwing up. So it was nerve-wracking. To compensate, I studied hard, spent long hours on even the dumbest assignments, trying to be a good student. But by the end of the first month it appeared that no amount of commitment would help.

After assigning an art exercise, Mrs. Murelius would roam the classroom, chatting with each of the twenty or so students individually, to comment on their progress (or lack of such), finally arriving where I was seated. I dreaded her repeated focus on my work, still not understanding the positive impact a great teacher could exert on a hard-working student such as myself. The breakthrough moment for me occurred sometime during the second month at CCAC, when she assigned us a project consisting of honeycomb boxes filled with some kind of repeating icon. For homework, each student constructed a framework and brought them to class the following week. Mrs. Murelius explained that we should use the three hours of studio time to fill each little cubbyhole with some creation – a circle, a figure, something that could be varied, repeated in each small environment – and then turn in the results for grading. But I wasn’t getting any ideas!

When Mrs. Murelius arrived at my desk and asked how I was doing, “Not well” must have been my answer (I was fiddling with two pieces of Balsa Wood and not getting anywhere). She encouraged me to just place them into one of the compartments and play around. While she stood there (more pressure) I placed the two pieces together, one in the foreground, one behind, then kind of fanned them out, wedging them against the top and bottom so they held their places. Then I made some subtle adjustments in the sticks while both of us eyed the little 3” square compartment. Suddenly and unexpectedly we both broke out laughing. The pieces had momentarily come alive! Just two sticks, one thin, one thicker – think Laurel and Hardy – had taken on some funny qualities, to which the two of us responded simultaneously. I’m sure that everyone in the class looked over at us, but I just remember her beaming face. That gruff old teacher had melted before a couple of little wooden sticks stuck in a box.

We recovered, exchanged knowing glances, and she moved on to the next student down the way. She had worked her magic. And for the first time in my life I had a mentor, someone who would help me keep on course.

TYPICAL TWENTIETH CENTURY (1967)

Up until my second year at CCAC, when I first signed up for a foundry class taught by sculptor Charlie Simonds, my hard work at art had accounted for a good grade point average, almost solid “A.” But Charlie didn’t give a shit about hard work. He wanted to see good, world-class sculptures, that’s all. A recent graduate of University of California’s MFA program, he was a hot-shot disciple of legendary sculptor/ceramicist Peter Voulkos, ready to kick ass on the art scene, make a name for himself and also hopefully survive teaching a bunch of weenies at CCAC. And he had the talent to back it up. But he really didn’t belong teaching undergraduate art – his standards were much too high! (I’m being facetious here, Charlie being, in my estimation, the exact right kind of teacher for art schools). If the art itself wasn’t good in his opinion, no matter how long the student had taken to create it, Charlie would verbally decimate it (them!) during the bi-monthly critiques. He didn’t suffer bad art gracefully. And there was rarely a critique in which tears weren’t shed by some poor art student.

When I showed Charlie the first wax sculpture I planned to cast he blurted out, “Typical Twentieth Century,” and told me to try again before committing to metal. I spent the next week melting wax, sticking pieces together, cutting and molding, scraping and finishing until my sculpture was “perfect,” but he shot it down again, saying, “It’s been done.” I left school that day confused, defeated, vowing never to return. Because his class was nine units, half the entire load of credits I carried that semester, I knew a failure here would surely mean academic disaster.

Reverting back my failure-mode operandi, a routine I knew well, I unofficially dropped out of school, stayed completely off campus, mostly just hung around the house. I have no idea what my first wife, Mary-Ann, thought was happening during this time. Perhaps I made up some excuse. I would have done my best to conceal the truth for as long as possible.

After a few weeks, I converted a vacant children’s playhouse in my back yard into a usable art studio (it accommodated a six-foot-high person with its peaked roof and 7’ square interior, and already had handy waist-high wraparound counters), and started playing with an old, half-circle wooden mold that I had purchased at a recent garage sale. I filled it with hot molten wax and let the material cool and coagulate to about a 3/16" thickness, creating some half-tube shapes. Then connecting them by melting the surfaces together, I made two identical undulating forms, wiggly like a snake, that I thought could be poured as aluminum. I figured that I could connect the two metal pieces to similar sized half-round wooden sticks, two inches in diameter. I could then finish those surfaces with spray paint, to create some sort of trapezoidal wall-hanging or floor piece.

Returning to the foundry one day, I proceeded to start ramming up the half-round forms of my tube sculpture, compacting special metal-casting sand against the hollow wax forms. By ramming sand against both sides, then removing the tube pattern, I’d have an exact cavity for replication in metal. In the midst of this activity, teacher Charlie Simonds, happened by. He asked what I was doing and I explained. Slowly he got a twinkle in his eye, exclaiming, “Not bad!” adding, “Want to be my TA?” By the time I cast it up, I was an official part of the foundry as a paid assistant.

“Curley-Cue,” painted wood and cast aluminum, ©1967 Rick Schmidt. (From "The Sculptures of Filmmker Rick Schmidt 1967-1971").

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