ART IN UNISON

Studying with Lafayette and visiting artists at the Williams Visual Arts Building propells high school seniors past senior slide.
by Rebecca Rhodin

The two canvasses on the wall don't scream out a message. In fact, it's hard to interpret their strange, colored circles and it could be easy for some to dismiss them as artsy nonsense-even if their creator, Emil Lukas, has exhibited his works internationally. But fortunately Lukas himself is on hand to discuss his artwork with 10 Phillipsburg High School students visiting his studio after school recently in Stockertown, Pa., as part of Lafayette's Community-Based Teaching program headquartered in the Williams Visual Arts Building. Carrying out an intensely felt mission

Peter Brown (center, foreground), artist-in-residence, and Jim Toia (far right), director of community-based teaching, guide Phillipsburg High School art students in a drawing exercise.

Lafayette is collaborating with Phillipsburg High to offer art education classes to PHS students at the Williams Visual Arts Building as part of the high school's noted school-to-careers program, in which students (mainly seniors) take jobs, go to community college, or seek enrichment at places like Lafayette. The Phillipsburg students, who have a serious interest in art, receive course credit for classes, lectures, and studio visits as they're drawn into the world that lives and breathes, creates and debates art.

Lukas asks the students what they think his pictures mean and muddies the water by supplying his own answer: everything. He describes a visit to an elementary school where a child got it right: "They tell you to love all that God has put on earth."

And suddenly the canvasses take on meaning. But how many high school students across the land would get past the strange little circles, which Lukas traces with a coffee can? And how many would have the chance to meet and talk with the artist himself?

"How Schools Are Trying to Avoid the 'Senior Slide'," an article in the Jan. 19 New York Times, calls the Lafayette-Phillipsburg collaboration one of the more successful programs in New Jersey's push to make the final year of high school more productive, stimulating, and challenging by allowing seniors to "step into the real world" of internships, work, or college courses.

Cotaught by Bob Jiorle, PHS art teacher, and Jim Toia, director of community-based teaching and the Grossman Gallery in the Williams Visual Arts Building, the program steeps a sometimes overlooked and isolated population of creative spirits in an environment inhabited with people like them. For some, it's one good reason to stay in school.

The students can see an artwork in progress-"the metamorphosis"-and talk with the artist behind it, notes Jiorle, who arranged for his juniors and seniors to travel across the Delaware River to Lafayette, at first once, and now three times, a week. "You can't ask for a better atmosphere for any kid who's interested in art."

Students receive expert instruction from sculptor and artist Peter Brown who currently has exhibits in New York City and Williams Visual Arts Building.

assignment. It's made me more aware of a society of artists. It seems more like a family. Everyone's always interested in what you have to say, as long as you give them respect." "It's done wonders for me. I look forward to coming here," says Wendy Bussard, 16, who might otherwise be drawing her fantasy pictures in misunderstood isolation. "I had never done sculpture before, but now I do sculptures of fairies and put them in my room. I need to get shelves!" "This gives the kids an opportunity that might not otherwise be afforded them," says Bud Kohler, Phillipsburg's school-to-careers coordinator. "It expands their experiences beyond what we can provide in school." From the earliest planning stages of the art center Lafayette President Arthur J. Rothkopf '55 has referred to the building as a new bridge between the campus and Easton that "underscores Lafayette's commitment to the revitalization of Easton's downtown business core."

The Times says, "Arthur Rothkopf, the president of Lafayette, sees the arrangement as a fair trade. After all, reasons Mr. Rothkopf, some students may decide to attend Lafayette. In addition, the program-which includes students from Pennsylvania and New Jersey-promotes good relations between the college and the community."

In addition to taking classes and visiting studios, the PHS students assist artists with exhibits at the Visual Arts Center. For example, both high school and Lafayette students helped artist Willie Cole install his January show, a maze of weathered, old revolving doors to walk through with labels such as "The Right Way" and "The Short Way," leading to a variety of avenues and confrontations.

The students' job was to come up with more doors from junkyards and label them with nouns of fear or desire ("Ebola," "AIDS"). In an added dimension, Cole's show held lessons just for them, since it seemed to address the choices made in life.

"The students' active involvement became a collaboration with Willie," Toia says. "It's an opportunity to work with contemporary artists who are currently exhibiting, to talk with them about ideas, to learn a new language." Last academic year, Williams Visual Arts Building hosted eight exhibitions featuring the work of 50 artists representing seven countries. Eighteen artists lectured to the public and 13 performed workshops specifically for high school students and adults. Nine artists were granted residencies lasting from two days to three months. The same level of activity is ongoing in 2002-03.

Willie Cole (center) discusses the objectives of his art and answers questions from high school students from around the Lehigh Valley. As part of the high school program, students found doors to add to Cole's exhibit-a maze of weathered, old revolving doors.

The multitude of activities is like a wonderful stew, bringing together teachers, artists, students, and visitors with no one excluded. "One of the easiest ways to think about it is that whenever anything happens here, we try to share it with all of our constituents," says Edward J. Kerns, Eugene H. Clapp II Professor of Art and director of the Williams Visual Arts Building. "It's hard to find anything as integrated and open with the public involved."

THEN AND NOW

Studio Art: In the Beginning

In 1922, the first group of fine arts courses- including sculpture and painting-was added to Lafayette's curriculum. Little is known about the study of studio art until the 1960s when a campaign was launched to strengthen art and music. Clarence Carter was hired as artist-in-residence and to teach studio art. The department of art and music was created in 1964 with Johannes Gaertner as head. A major in art history was offered for the first time in 1968. Seven years later, art and music became separate departments. In 1979, the major in art was approved.

New Department Head Edward J. Kerns and students in old studio in Jenks Hall in 1982.

But the true seeds of the current blossoming were planted in the early 1980s. "Taking art courses," says a junior who switched from engineering to economics to art history, "is the 'in' thing on campus these days. It's the new wave." Art was hot back in spring 1982, when the art department was housed in the basement of Jenks Hall (later renovated into the William E. Simon Center for Economics and Business Administration), according to the spring 1982 Lafayette Alumni Quarterly.

The surging interest was fueled in part by the promise of an escape from Jenks to the new Williams Center for the Arts, due to open in 1983, but even more by the arrival of three faculty members Diane Cole Ahl and Robert Saltonstall Mattison had come to Lafayette in 1977 and 1981, respectively, with Ph.D.'s from distinguished art history programs at University of Virginia and Princeton. In September 1980, Edward J. Kerns arrived as new department head. By spring 1982, Ahl's courses were attracting overflow crowds. A prominent New York artist, but also an experienced administrator (architect of the art program at Friends Seminary, Manhattan), Kerns had come with "a vision," Ahl said. Now, two years later, Kerns said, "Professionals are talking about us in the city. Lafayette's reputation in art has increased at least 10 times."

Lafayette students, including Liz Robb '05 and Dan Tye '03, work with the high school students as teaching assistants. That's unusual for a college art program, Toia says. "It gives the high school students a sense of what college is like, makes the process less scary," he adds. "High school students interested in art are often the 'fringe' kids, and this gives them a sense of community."

Robb, who works with the students as an internship for academic credit, says the experience has made her want to be an art professor. "I want to get my Ph.D. in art or art history and teach at a small school like Lafayette."

"The students have passion about their work, and they're all really talented," says Robb, a double major in art and anthropology & sociology. "When we were working on digital photography, one student produced something that was so nice I asked her if I could buy it, and she said yes. It was amazing to see what she could do when she put her mind to it."

Another aim, according to Kerns, is to "have the kids see something of themselves" in the artist's life and demystify it "as they view us in the throes of failure or success."

That way, "the students begin to realize that the struggle is an interesting part of the process," says Lew Minter, media lab director. So money isn't part of the struggle, Lafayette provides the art supplies and computer disks. The program adjusts to the students' interests, including hiring a model for figure drawing at least once.

"It's always changing, and there are always a lot of ideas," Toia says. "I hope kids who have a proclivity toward art will get the chance to investigate it, rather than have someone say it's not important and push it aside. I don't want them to fall between the cracks, as many do. I want to teach them that their ideas and interests are valuable, and there's a place for them. They don't have to show that they're talented-just that they have a serious interest in art."

The Times article focused on PHS student Lindsey Tibbott, 17, a junior who is graduating early. She calls the program an amazing opportunity. "I didn't used to like high school, but after getting involved in the program, it made me want to come to school," says Tibbott. "I always took art classes, but it didn't seem like an option for a career. Now I get to see people with careers in art and it seems like more of a possibility."

Rachel Case, 17, says her involvement in the program has had an ironic twist: Now that she has broken away from the careful copying of Old Masters that people used to praise her for "no one appreciates" her new style. And yet she's happy. "I've sure come a long way from that," she says. "I'm working on my individuality as an artist. I used to be down on myself, but I love my artwork and get a lot of respect here."

Respect is widely shared at the Williams Visual Arts Building, which shuns a hierarchical style of teaching and engages all on an equal level, says Toia. "The students are learning from the professors and the professors from the students," he says. "They're learning from visiting artists who come here from the community. There's an open-studio atmosphere where local and regional artists can come in as visiting artists for up to a semester."

Kerns concurs. "As a professor you are both a resource and a colearner. Faculty and student artists are working and learning together in an atmosphere of exciting synergy," he says.

That philosophy is reflected in the prize-winning building itself, renovated from a Packard car dealership built in the early 1920s. It has wide-open spaces, windows to see outside and within, and walls that don't reach the ceiling, with the idea of intermingling of minds, developing "a living art machine or organism," says Kerns.

The Christian Science Monitor (Jan. 17) recognized Lafayette's art program in a feature story on the art world's shift toward greater collaboration.

"The stereotype of a lone artist struggling in a garret is being replaced by a team ethos," it says, as more artists work collaboratively, particularly young ones.

"I'm not bothered that I can hear someone else's radio or people sawing. I like the idea of vitality," Kerns says. "I'm proud of the building and my colleagues' ability to see beyond their particular needs to the needs of the community." The alternative is disaster, he says. "This could become a bastion of privilege. It could degenerate into closed doors, fighting over supplies-then it would be all over.

"People who are like-minded are drawn to it. The narrow, self-serving person can't make headway," Kerns continues, adding that he is proud of the college for its backing and the staff that models collaboration and experimentation and makes it all work.

Even Jiorle, who has taught for 29 years, feels renewed and enriched by the experience. "It's amazing to talk with Ed Kerns and Jim and all the other artists who come in," he says. "Here, you're with your own kind, living and breathing art. I had almost forgotten."