I was clueless about what to do after high school. Although I had taken courses (including two years of Latin) to prepare for college, I waited until I'd graduated to even think about applying. Fortunately, Holland was a college town and Hope college was a Reformed Church college so all I had to do was ask the local Plymouth dealer who happened to go to our church, to write me a recommendation, and I was in.
I took an art class the first semester. My teacher, Miss Wood (I never called her Marcia) saved my sorry ass.
Miss Wood had studied at the Courtauld Institute in London, and at some Ivy League school with Gregory Kepyes and Buckminster Fuller. She was firm without being strict, and had a great sense of humor, and I took every assignment she handed out as if it were mine alone. Today I would have known she was a lesbian, but at the time I didn't know what a lesbian was. That first year she taught basic drawing and basic design. I learned to look; something about composition; and improved my drawing skills.
As it happened there were three student art majors that year at Hope, and they were all seniors. You couldn't declare your major until your sophomore year, and there was no one in the pipeline. So when I declared my art major (as soon as I became eligible) I was the only art major, and I had the faculty's undivided attention.
My sophomore year, Miss Wood taught sculpture and three dimensional design. She was a terrific painter, but sculpture was her passion. She called me 'Melvino', and I was enthralled. During the short course of a semester, my work progressed from cute to solid.
We mostly modeled in clay, did a bisc fire and applied patina with simple glazes or shoe polish. A photograph of one of my earliest abstract sculptures was published in Opus, the college literary journal. Miss Wood helped me name it 'Cathedra' (a bishop's chair.)
We talked a lot about the Renaissance, although there was no formal art history class at the time.
'Gypsy Revelers' my most complicated piece, was influenced by Miss Wood's admiration for Henry Moore.
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