<Begin Segment 35>

AI: Well, we, you were just on the point of going, or you had --

RS: Right.

AI: -- told us how you had driven down to California to go to the summer session at Stanford.

RS: Actually I had, when I decided that I was dropping out of the program I applied to graduate school so I decided to go back East, because the furthest east I had been was kindergarten, in Chicago after camp. And there were certain people that have, that had gone from the University of Washington to Syracuse University, one of them was Irene Kubota. And, whose work I really respected. And there was a fellow named Larry Bakke that actually got a job at Syracuse, teaching. And he was supposed to be this very influential person, who was, who taught aesthetics at Syracuse. And so I decided I would apply there and to New York University, and not knowing anything about New York University except it was in New York City. And I got a call from NYU and said, "We accepted you and we're gonna send you your program of studies," which they did. And I looked at it. And there was one painting course and there were two art education courses and an aesthetics course. And I called 'em up and said, "I want to get my degree in painting." And they said, "Well, you will be getting an emphasis in painting but all we have is an art education program." And I says, "Well, I don't want anything to do with art education." And they said, "Well, that's, that's all we offer." And so it was at that point that I decided that I would apply to Syracuse, and I had Boyer Gonzalez, I called him up and I said, "Boyer, I think I want to go to Syracuse but I think I missed the deadline." And he said, "Don't worry, I know Laurence Schmeckebier," who's the dean at Syracuse. And he called up Schmeck, we used to call him. And Schmeck called me up and said, "I understand that you want to come to Syracuse." He was this sort of blustery old guy. And he said, "Send me your slides," which I did, special delivery, it was called then. And I got a call back a few years later and said, "You're in the program."

MT: Not a few years later?

RS: No, I'm sorry, a few weeks later.

MT: Okay.

RS: And then I found our how expensive it was. I mean, Syracuse was a private school and it was outrageous tuition. And, but Bea and I had settled for pain and suffering for this car accident so we had this load of money and I thought, well, this will pay for the first year's tuition. So we took off. But before we took off to go to Syracuse, I went to Stanford because my work was in really rough shape at that point. And when I sent stuff to Syracuse I sent mostly drawings and a few of the paintings that looked like the drawings. So they thought they were getting an abstract expressionist.

So I decided I'd go to Stanford for the summer session. And that was the best thing that could have happened to me because when I went to Stanford, they put me in with all the graduate students, most of whom weren't there because it was summer school. And I fell under the influence of the whole Bay Area figurative school, 'cause that was going on in the mid-'60s. And so I was amongst all these students that were working with similar kinds of pop imagery but with very painterly. And so I started collaging magazines and painting and everything just fell into place. And I did this series of work that I thought was really strong. And so it was a good place to be before I went to Syracuse. So I came back to Seattle, laid out all the work and said, hey, I'm on track for the first time. So I went to Syracuse with a sense of direction.

<End Segment 35> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.