Interlock II, 1996.
Egg tempera/paper,
14-3/4 x 24-1/8
by Clinton Adams

According to Brian Hansen, former professor of theatre, "In retirement, people get to rewrite their job description. . ." I certainly enjoyed learning more about these individuals and trust you will as well!

- Dean Tom Dodson

Living Art

In Oaxaca, Mexico, where she is spending two months thanks to the liquidation of a "well-loved sports car in my driveway," Jan Abrams writes: "Travel for an artist--and for me in particular--is important. It stimulates my cells to rearrange so that I become a slightly different person . . . see things differently. Some old parts fall away and others become clearer. I never know quite what will be different and to what degree . . . only that accelerated change is inevitable. I am writing in my journal and painting of course, but mostly letting that cellular rearrangement take place as it will. I have no expectations. I am only enjoying the process."

One project in Oaxaca is firm, however. Abrams will be producing two prints which will combine etching and lithography. She will work with two master printers in Oaxaca, lithographer Mark Silverberg and etcher Fernando Sandoval.

"She pushes that through her sieve and creates rich art which pays homage to the culture and tradition, but is uniquely Jane."

Originally coming to UNM to teach lithography, Abrams simultaneously made her mark as a painter. "Jane is one of the great unsung master printmakers in UNM's renowned tradition and one of the great painters who live in New Mexico," says Facey.

He offers an analogy for Jane's talents: "It's like a concertmaster playing her violin, then putting it down and singing an aria. It is the same piece of music, but she is using different skills."

Adams celebrated his 80th birthday with work in three major exhibitions around the country. A retrospective, "Clinton Adams: Twenty-five Lithographs from Fifty Years," first shown at the Kennedy Museum of American Art, Ohio University, where the artist received a lifetime achievement award from the Southern Graphics Council, then came to the University of New Mexico Art Museum before traveling to Long Beach Museum of Art in January. While lithographs were the focus of the Long Beach show, Adams' concurrent show at the Tobey C. Moss Gallery in Los Angeles highlighted his paintings and drawings as well. This spring, Adams' lithographs were included in a major retrospective, "Treasures Revealed: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Works on Paper," at the prestigious National Academy of Design in New York, and in that institution's 174th annual exhibition.

Clinton was a frequent flier on Southwest Airlines this year, attending the openings at Long Beach Museum and the Moss Gallery; lecturing on Picasso's lithographs at Stanford University, where he contributed an essay to the exhibition catalogue, Picasso, Graphic Magician: Prints from the Norton Simon Museum; and flying again to Long Beach to meet with UNM alumni and friends from Southern California.

According to University Art Museum Director Peter Walch, Clinton is known as "the great pragmatist" at the table of a long-standing poker game in which many members of the UNM community have participated over the years, among them Donald McRae, former Fine Arts dean and music professor; John Perovich, former UNM president; Richard Berthold, history professor; and Tony Hillerman, UNM emeritus and novelist.

Clinton's wife Mary is an active member of the Friends of Dance board.

"Concerts keep me quite busy, plus I teach a few students privately," says George Robert, longtime member of the Seraphin Trio. "Concerts require quite a bit of practice, and rehearsal with my colleagues. You have to be in good shape and as perfectly polished as possible."

The Seraphin Trio has performed together for decades. The members are now all UNM emeriti professors: Robert, piano; Joanna deKeyser, cello; and Lenny Felberg, violin.

The talent is reciprocated when the Seraphin Trio plays a program requiring additional instruments, such as a viola or bass. Often it is UNM music faculty who join the trio on stage. Collaboration keeps the creative juices flowing.

Professor of Art and Art History
Depart Chair, Director of University Art Museum
At UNM 1962-1980

"I do still photography every week, when the spirit moves me. That's what got me into this as a teenager," says Van Deren Coke, whose life combines his passion for photography and history.

Coke has several projects on-going. One is a book on Mexican figural ceramic folk art, now half-finished by his account. "I began the book in 1948 when I first went to Mexico," he quips. Van served as the first director of the University Art Museum, and he maintains close ties. He has given some of his extensive collection of 500 figures to the museum for an upcoming exhibition.

Mexican figural ceramic folk art,
circa 1975, Village of Tzintzuntzan,
State of Michoacan
Property of Van Deren & Joan Coke

Van explains his writing process. "I generate ideas, then mull it over and find the right words to express myself." He is currently writing a book, The Artists Environment 1855-1995, about 120 painters who have worked or are working in Taos, Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

"UNM Press asked me to add to my earlier book, but I have to revise the whole thing," says Van who calls his landmark 1963 book, The Artists Environment 1882-1942, only a thumbnail sketch for this current book's much expanded view. "The earlier book stopped at the end of 1942; I thought that was going to be the end of the world because of Los Alamos.

Van came to UNM from Arizona State University during Clinton Adams' tenure as UNM College of Fine Arts dean; he still has great respect for Adams. "Clinton was the best dean you could have--brilliant and tough. He would listen to new ideas. If he believed in you, he'd go get the money. He is a great administrator and lithographer. He's got both energy and insights."

"I fell in love with watercolors. It fits my personality," delcares Harold Van Winkle.

When he did retire from UNM, Harold took private painting lessons for a year with fellow emeritus Jim Whitlow, trumpet professor and watercolor artist (see story in this newsletter). After Van Winkle's first show, which was very successful, Whitlow reportedly told his colleague, "You're on your own; you don't need any more lessons."

Van Winkle recently stepped down after six years as director of the Albuquerque Community Band. And he stopped accepting invitations to adjudicate band festivals. He is concentrating solely on his painting, with obvious success.

In 1998, Van Winkle was accepted into the prestigious Western Federation of Watercolorists annual show presenting the best from seven states. He enters six or seven juried shows yearly and sells as many paintings as he completes.

He is also now a signature member of the New Mexico Watercolor Society, an honor that requires an artist to have been accepted into five of the association's juried shows. Signature members may sign NMWS under their name on paintings.

Harold loves to travel with wife, Darlene, "taking advantage of the time that retirement has afforded us." In addition to excursions throughout New Mexico and the surrounding states, they have made two trips to each destination: Mexico, Hawaii and Europe. "Most of my paintings are reflective of these adventures," notes Van Winkle.

Professor of Painting and Drawing
At UNM 1964-1987

Professor Emeritus Robert Ellis is currently director of The Harwood Museum in Taos, having taught painting and drawing at UNM from 1964-1987. Fourteen of Ellis' colleagues--UNM faculty who taught with Bob--have donated their work to Harwood in his name. An opening for this exhibition of faculty work is scheduled for Fall 1999 at Harwood, a division of the University of New Mexico.

The art will be identified as a collection donated by 14 colleagues, faculty of UNM, in Bob's name. Donations of their work come from artists Nick Abdalla, Jane Abrams, Clinton Adams, Garo Antreasian, Tom Barrow, Van Deren Coke, Elen Feinberg, Betty Hahn, Jim Jacob, Jim Kraft, Rod Lazorik, Ralph Lewis, John Wenger, and Harry Nadler, the latter donated by his wife, Helen. "I personally am overwhelmed by such a wonderful offer," wrote Ellis in an acceptance letter. The turn of circumstances that again find Ellis a full-time UNM employee may be traced to his starting the D.H. Lawrence Ranch workshops as a UNM professor in 1981. Retiring in 1987, he built a house in Taos and worked as contract faculty for the Lawrence workshops which remain popular summer offerings of the Department of Art and Art History.

In 1990, UNM asked Ellis to be Harwood's interim part-time director--a job which soon after became full time and permanent. The Harwood Museum features work by 20th century artists who have lived or worked in Taos. Given to UNM in 1936, the Harwood was expanded at that time in a project overseen by southwest architect John Gaw Meem.

In 1997, another landmark renovation and expansion project was completed at Harwood. Bob Ellis led the successful $1.5 million fundraising effort and oversaw the project. "We went from two galleries to seven, and the museum gained 7,000 square feet," says Ellis, who was largely responsible for creating the new Agnes Martin Gallery.

"Bob Ellis revived the Harwood," credits Jim Jacob. "He is great at networking. He makes things happen." As if to underscore Jacob's remarks, Ellis invites UNM alumni living in northern New Mexico to call him if they are interested in Harwood. Two UNM alumni, Debbie Friday and Isaac Gonzales, currently serve on the museum's advisory board. Bob's phone number is (505) 758-9826 at the Harwood Museum in Taos.

Brian Hansen retired from UNM in 1995, but continued to be a presence on campus for the next two and a half years as an anthropology graduate student. He was continuing his probe into a question that intrigued him as a theatre professor. "Why do we do the Arts at all?" asks Brian, who is looking for the answer in anthropology and biology, not in the arts.

Now ensconced in his boyhood home of Santa Barbara, Hansen is writing a book of essays addressing this question "Why the Arts?" from an evolutionary perspective. In evolutionary theory, energy goes into activities which improve our chances for survival. "If making art is as wasteful as it seems, why do we do it?" he asks. Hansen argues that humans making art must have some evolutionary advantage. "Within the arts, we are able to expand our experiences and live several lives for the price of one. We humans have found that we have more experiences in problem-solving by sharing our experience through language with the rest of the tribe. That is education.

"An artist takes experience and feeds it back to the audience. I get to live not only my life, but Shakespeare's life, Picasso's life. It is an evolutionary strategy that allows us to be more successful."

If form follows function, believes Hansen, then the form of the art is related to its function. "At some primitive level, individuals seek out those arts that they need," he proposes. "There is something that people who seek dance need from it."

Hansen is taking classes in the evolutionary psychology program at the University of California at Santa Barbara. At UNM, his courses were in the human evolution and ecology program. "I'm doing this for self-satisfaction and to write a book," explains Hansen, who has finished ten essays. "In retirement, people get to rewrite their job description and crank up the volume."

Ernest Rose analyzes
frames from the Zapruder film
at the National Archives
in Washington, D.C.

Documentary film and travel are two constants in Ernie Rose's life. In the last three years, Rose has traveled many times to Washington D.C. as a special consultant to the U. S. Department of Justice. Although he cannot divulge many details about his work, the project draws on his years of expertise in documentary films to assist the government in a dispute concerning the dollar value of the 8-millimeter movie taken by Abraham Zapruder of the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963.

Another project involved travel to Morocco where Rose recently shot additional footage for a feature-length documentary he is producing. Closer to home, Rose is planning a new film on the Sonoma County Grand Jury on which he served this year as a citizen of Santa Rosa, California.

In 1995, Rose was awarded his fourth Senior Fulbright Fellowship and traveled to the tiny island nation of Malta in the Mediterranean, where he worked with fledgling film and video producers.

This was not Rose's first film work on an island. In 1953, he had made a movie about the remote Tonga Islands Kingdom in the South Pacific. Rose had lived with a missionary family briefly while filming at the missionary school. Two years ago, at the 50th high school reunion in Tonga, the missionary's son (who had been a seven-year old at the time of the filming) reminded his classmates of the film, but no one there had ever seen it. He began a year-long search through the United States for the filmmaker, Ernie Rose. Last year, Rose received a letter which has resulted in a renewed friendship and a promised screening of the film in Tonga in the near future. A new copy of the aging film has been made and rare material of life in Polynesia half a century ago is now available.