Another blog about the people who've made a difference in my life. While looking for a photo for a friend, I stumbled upon this old 360 blog that I thought might be worth re-posting here. Dick DePeaux is, in a very large part, responsible for my even becoming an artist after high school. He's definitely worth another mention here on Multiply.

(Snuffy, it's long, so maybe just have Heather give you the Reader's Digest version?)

Many of you know by now that when I was 16, I went to live in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. What some of you don't know is that I went there to study at Sophia Polytechnic, a 9-hour-a-day, 6-days-a-week all-girls art school. While there, I lost most of my self-confidence when it came to my talents in art. Not that I was bad, but they were SO good and SO disciplined! I came back from that year and finished off my senior year of high school with an independent study in Art and the "Most Outstanding Artist" award at graduation. Even though this post is about Prof. DePeaux, I have to mention my Art teacher in HS, Sherrie McCabe. She was so supportive, and such a cool person, and she seemed to try very hard to support my artistic side. Unfortunately, she was unable to overcome my insecurities, so I registered at Western Michigan University as a Psychology major, with an unknown minor.

So, in the fall of 1989 I went to WMU and, during one of my GHUM (General Humanities) classes - you know, one of those 300-student type lecture halls, where you know the professor isn't going to pay attention to any one student - I was drawing in class (remember this photo, those of you who've been with me a while?) Paying very little attention to the professor that day, I didn't realize that his lecture had paused and that he was standing behind me, watching me draw. When I looked up, he said "See me after class." I was so scared, sure he was going to kick me out of his class. To my surprise, he instead asked me if I had more work like this. I told him about my portfolio from my time in India, and my senior year of HS, and he gave me a note and told me to go see the advisor for the Art Dept.

Little did I know that on that day, my interaction with Richard DePeaux had just begun and my life changed.

I went to the Art Dept., and, after looking at my portfolio, the advisor made me an Art Major with a Psych minor, waiving my first year of required basic art classes.

I had a fair amount of interaction with Prof. DePeaux throughout that semester, because during a lecture one day he was talking about a satellite that was as far up in the sky from Kalamazoo, Michigan, as the U.P. (Upper Peninsula of Michigan) was. He then asked if there were any "Yoopers" in the room, and to my surprise I was the only one who raised my hand. I guess you'd have to know the U.P. to understand the connection many people have to it and the people there. It is a very small peninsula, actually connected by land to Wisconsin, but to the lower peninsula of Michigan by a 5-mile suspension bridge. The people up in the U.P. (Yoopers) are, in general, very much small-town people who are extremely friendly and willing to help a stranger in need. The accent is like that found in much of Canada (we say "let's go oatside/ootside for a while" and we pronounce sauna the way it's supposed to be pronounced: SOW-nuh), and life is, or at least it was for me, pretty simple, by comparison. I can't remember, but I don't think Prof. DePeaux was from the U.P., I think he was from Wisconsin, but he loved the U.P. and the people there, so we had a bit of a bond from the get-go.

After that class, I didn't see Prof. DePeaux for a couple more years, when one day I was walking along campus and I heard someone call out my name. I turned, and it was him. I couldn't believe he remembered me from that class during my Freshman year, but he did. And he told me that the Art Dept. was going to start a new class on computer graphics, and he thought that I should give it a try. I did, and that was my first introduction to Photoshop (2.0, I think) – I fell in love with the concepts and possibilities. I took every computer graphics class I could, and even when I was done with them, Prof. DePeaux (who was one of the instructors and co-managed the lab) would always let me come into the lab any time I wanted, even if there was another class going on in there, so long as there was a free computer.

Nearly every time I would walk in while there was a class going on, he would make them stop what they were doing, and would say, "Take a good look at her, everyone, because she's really going to be someone someday." No one had ever said things like that about me before, and while it was a little embarrassing, it really helped boost my self-confidence a lot. I'm not sure what he ever saw in me or my work, but I'm sure thankful he saw it. He and his attitude and his comments really changed my life.

I helped him set up an exhibit on campus one weekend. It was an exhibit of artwork from some visiting Japanese artists. Prof. DePeaux had visited Japan (and exhibited his work there) a few times, so he knew some Japanese, but I knew none. Setting up that exhibit was one of my most fond memories at WMU. I communicated with these artists through gestures and thoughts and attempts at aesthetic displays, and absolutely no words. I can't possibly explain it here, but it was a very special experience for me.

There is not one professor at WMU who had more of an influence on my life and art career than he did and still has. He is an incredibly warm, talented, giving individual. He travels around the world, exhibiting and selling his work. I know for a fact that he has touched so many peoples' lives .. he's just one of those people that people remember for a long time, you know? You meet him, and you remember him, and you wish you could know more, experience more, have more time with him.

We e-mail back and forth a few times a year, for the past 7-8 years, when I finally got the guts to e-mail him to see if he remembered me, back in 2000. He always remembers me when I e-mail him, and always responds so kindly. I feel that, without Prof. DePeaux having entered my life, way back in the early '90s, I would not even remotely resemble the person I am today, so I hope Jeremy someday gets to meet the person who, in very basic terms, really made this all possible. :)

I know they say that everyone you meet in life has some kind of influence over some part of your life, but without Prof. DePeaux, I might well have continued on at WMU as a Psych. major, and then who knows where I'd be right now? Nowhere near as happy in life, I can almost guarantee. How about any of you? Anyone else have a professor or other person in their past who made such an impact?

In 1989 I went to WMU (Western Michigan U.) as a Psych major. A year studying art in India in '87-'88 was enough to convince me that in no way was I good enough of an artist to make a living at it. So, although I loved art, and spent 2 periods/day my senior year in the art room, and won the Outstanding Senior Artist award at graduation, off I went to the world of Psychology.

To make a long intro shorter, I got caught drawing in class one day. One of those huge lecture halls. It was sufficiently embarrassing, and I was sure the prof. was going to kick me out. By a twist of fate, he was only filling in for this class and was really from the Art Dept. With his pushing, I brought my portfolio to an advisor and that very day, without even asking me first, she changed me to an Art major with a Psych minor and waived my first year of classes. Tint, I'm still digging for some pics to share, but here is a very bad photo I found of that exact drawing I was messing with that day. Ha. Please go easy on me. I was 18. :)

I tell this story only to explain that I had (and still have, in many respects) some serious doubts about my abilities, and by no means did I always "know" that I wanted to be involved in the art world or anything like that. However, that said, it always came relatively easy to me. The assignments and such, in college, most of them didn't inspire me a whole lot but they were easy enough.

My fave classes were life drawing classes. I'd spent a lifetime looking at anyone's body but my own (ie - "fat kid") and I was just enthralled by drawing it. For the first time, I found a challenge. I was "ok" at it .. but not great. And boy, did I want to be great.

I had this very cool professor, Jon. He must have weighed no more than about 90 lbs. I'd say he was probably about 5'2" and had this huuuge mustache that covered his entire mouth so you couldn't even see his lips move when he talked. He also bartended on the weekends, so I knew him a little bit socially, as well. He was very cool, and very talented. I think he sensed my struggle and one day said, "Come outside with me." WMU is a very pretty campus in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Sangren Hall (at that time the art building .. they have a new ultra-modern looking one now) was at the top of a hill with lots of trees, that looked over a large swan pond out near the dorms called "The Valley" (where I lived).

As we walked outside in unseasonably still, warm Michigan fall weather, he said, "Ok, lay down here," and gestured at a leafy patch of ground off to the side of one of the huge oak trees.

This image to the right, of course, wasn't exactly the scene, but I bought it this morning off of iStock so that I could use it in this blog. Copyright/artist info is on the file.

So, we laid on the ground, both of us, on our backs, and looked up at the tree. It was silent just long enough for me to start to get a bit antsy and wonder what the hell we were doing here.

He said, reading my mind, "Just look at the tree."

"Ok."

And there we laid for what seemed like 3.5 hours but what was in actuality probably less than 3 minutes.

"Ok," he continued, "Now reverse the space."

And, in typical smartassed college student fashion, without even thinking about what he said for 2 seconds, I replied, "Huh?"

"Reverse the space."

Well, he may as well have asked me to jump up and fly around the tree 3 times. I couldn't reverse the space! What was he, insane?

After a few minutes I told him, "I can't."

He smiled. Or at least, I think it was a smile. Hard to tell with that mustache. He went on to tell me that he didn't think I'd be able to right away, but to keep trying, because when I finally could, I would never see things the same again, and my artwork would at that moment change for the better in ways I wouldn't understand for a long, long time.

Well of course I doubted what he was saying (in as much as I doubted myself and my abilities) but I actually did keep trying. Every day as I was walking home from classes, I would stare at those trees as if I were willing them to jump into the background somehow – waiting for the sky to open up and absorb them. And then one day it happened – I did it! I about dropped my entire armload of books as I stopped dead in my tracks on the sidewalk.

It didn't happen in one quick step, of course. First my mind isolated a section of tree and then kind of intensified the contrast.

Then, it just kind of slipped, flipped ... right into place. And all of a sudden, the sky was the foreground and the tree was the background and I honestly thought to myself, "I'm never going to be able to look at a tree the same way again!" And you know what? I really don't think I have. I stopped seeing forms for what they were, and started seeing them as a series of lines and shapes and shadows. I was able to represent things that weren't there, as opposed to things my brain told me were. It was a turning point in my art career and really, a turning point in my life. I feel like I started to see everything differently at that point, including people and, most importantly, including myself. I stopped seeing myself as fitting into a certain mold. I wasn't:

• the fat kid
• the daughter of alcoholics
• the exchange student
• the artist
• the un-date-able
• the smart kid

They were factions of me, but they didn't define who I was. I changed a lot that year. In some ways my whole world got jumbled up and changed all around. But the main thing I wanted to share with you was the lesson I learned about how to help myself see things differently.

Were you able to do it in the above images? Were you able to see the sky in front of the tree branches? If not, does this image help? If you're trying to change some things up in your life, give this a whirl. See what you can see. See what you haven't been seeing. Seriously, what have you got to lose?

In closing I wanted to share a quote that was also given to me that year. I have always really loved it. Unfortunately I can't find my original copy in order to tell you who said/wrote it, but if I do, I will definitely come back and attribute it.