<Begin Segment 30>

RS: But in any case... so I was working with these four painters and just sort of believing everything that all of them had to say and Boyer was extremely supportive of me. And why, I have no idea because when I look back on the work that I was doing for him, I doubt whether I would have supported myself, because I thought that the work was so naive. But he did provide me with my first opportunity to talk about painting as though I understood what painting was. And, and I'll always be grateful to him for that support. So after one quarter of taking those painting courses, they encouraged me to apply for graduate study there. And I did, and those four teachers all supported me and I was accepted into the program. And amazingly, I was not just accepted into the program but they offered me a graduate teaching assistantship.

And I always remember, about two weeks before I was to be in the classroom, my wife and I -- I had gotten married in that period of time to Bea Kiyohara. But Bea and I got into a car accident that almost killed both of us, up on Broadway. And we both ended up in the hospital, and both totally disabled, broken arms, legs, everything else. She had a clavicle that was broken in half and her arm in a cast with her arm up, she had plastic surgery on her face... anyway, it was real bad. But somehow I was determined to get out of the hospital and go to that first day of class. I always remember that, and going in on crutches and sort of facing my first class ever. But it was a very exciting period of time for me because, to be thrust into the classroom, having only been teaching for just a few -- or painting for a few months prior to that, was just amazing. And then when I think about going from there to graduate school eventually, and going to Kansas, I'd only been painting for maybe three years before I started teaching. So it was it was a time of very radical changes and growing up.

AI: A lot of things happened in a very short space of time there.

RS: Right.

AI: Before we go on to the next phase, I wanted to ask you a little bit about your marriage and how you came to meet your wife, your first wife and whether that big change in your life had much of an impact on your work at that time?

RS: Uh, I believe I met Bea at a party. I'm not sure, it was a party up on Beacon Hill. She was from Kent. She went to Kent High School, but she was going to the University of Washington when I was involved in, I think, taking those initial painting courses. And to tell you the truth, I can't remember the exact circumstances that we met, but there was an overlap between both of our social lives and we knew people in common. And we started dating and eventually got married. She was majoring in creative dramatics, which was a field of, that had to do with teaching theater to children. And I remember going to some of her stage productions that she was involved with as an undergraduate in creative dramatics. But anyway, I think it was in 1965 that we got married. And moved to an apartment on Capitol Hill, Ben Lomond Apartments, it was sort of a landmark place because you go up I-5, you see Ben Lomond Apartments that sort of hung over the freeway and we got an apartment there. It was eighty dollars a month and we were right above the -- you could spit out the window and land on the freeway, listening to that incredible constant roar of cars and trucks and so on, but this amazing view of Seattle. And I remember having a lot of parties. And again, it was a period of these rapid changes because all of a sudden as a married couple, associating with other young married couples that were in the art program and having these big parties that went on all night, and we all sorta took turns. Every weekend it was someone else's house, and just amazing changes to get into that sort of culture of artists.

AI: So, in a short space of time you went from your original career direction of commercial art to really making a huge change.

RS: Right, right. Well, I mean to back up even more than that, coming out of the military some sort of animal, practically. I mean, we didn't talk about that aspect of it, but being in the army, in Korea... and I talked a little bit about the sort of discipline that we imposed upon the enlisted men and the average grade level of people. I mean, all of that, really shaped a part of my personality that I wasn't proud of. And that carried all the way through the time that I was at Fort Lewis and carried through right up to that graduate school experience. But then I think things started to change when all of a sudden the people that I were associating were no longer military people, and they were all artists. And again, the culture was totally different. And I could feel myself sort of changing, without really thinking about it, I was changing. And certainly that continued on and continues through to this day.

<End Segment 30> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.