A Still Life

College painting class,  in the mid 1980's.

This is a large painting I completed in college, a long time ago. I did not really get the reflections right, or some of the shapes, but if you look at my art work along this blog's sidebar you can see the direction I went after my early attempts at traditional painting. After this painting class, I discovered Pop Art, (thanks to a really cool non-traditional professor), and had more freedom to develop my own style. Gotta learn the rules before you can break them, I guess. I think I got a C on this painting. I never liked following rules. This is hanging in my parents' house.

Paul Goodman on Education Reform (1966)

Writer and activist Paul Goodman said this back in 1966, when he was interviewed by William F. Buckley, but it is so relevant today:


The leaders, the educational decision-makers, Goodman says to Buckley, "have a theory of social engineers; they don't have the theory of human teachers or artists. The theory of a social engineer is you can analyze everything down to its least elements...but this isn't  how a person learns. A person learns by an intrinsic need or reaching out, and what you reach out to is what's interesting, and if the text isn't interesting then why bother?" Here's more info on Goodman's ideas about Education.