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This interview is being conducted in the Dean's Conference Room in the Center for Fine Arts on the Towson University campus. This is part of a series of interviews comprising the TURFA Oral History Project, conceived and supported by the Towson University Retired Faculty Association,

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with generous support from the Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communication. This interview, as well as others in this series, are available in the Towson University Archives.

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Ron Matlon: Greetings. I'm Ron Matlon, professor emeritus from the Department of Mass Communication and Communication Studies. Our guest today is Jim Paulson, professor emeritus from the Department of

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Art. Welcome, Jim. And we're going to start at the very beginning. Where were you born?

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Jim Paulsen: I was born in a place called Clinton, Iowa. It's right on the Mississippi River and I spent, what, of grew up in that area. Ron Matlon: And then let's jump ahead a bit.

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What colleges and universities did you attend? Jim Paulsen: Well, as an Illinois boy, I went to Western Illinois University for undergraduate. And then after I got a teaching degree at Western,

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I got a job teaching art in the public schools of DeKalb, Illinois, which is where Northern Illinois University is. So I pursued an MA degree at Northern and I was there for four years teaching in the local school system and was pursuing the MA.

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And then when I came out to Maryland much later, I did an MFA at the University of Delaware. Ron Matlon: What years were you at these different institutions? Jim Paulsen: Well, my early schooling, the undergraduate through graduate,

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through the MA, was 1961 to '65 at Western and then '66 to '69 at Northern Illinois. And then in '69 I came to Towson University to... Well, I came to Towson State College and I only had the MA degree.

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I was in an MFA program at Northern, but I thought that I might want to test the waters just because university and college teaching positions were starting to close down. So I pursued the job market in '69 and came to Towson State College.

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It was a great opportunity for me, but I only had an MA degree at the time and the writing was on the wall that if you didn't have a terminal degree, either an earned doctorate or in the case of my field an MFA, you weren't going anywhere, any further.

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And I had already gotten to associate professorship by '84 it was. And so I packed it in and got a sabbatical and went off to the University of Delaware.

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And I was there for two years, University of Delaware. Ron Matlon: So at some point along that road, you decided you wanted a career in higher education. Why?

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Jim Paulsen: I don't know. When I was a senior at Western Illinois, I had an instructor who... He kept telling me that... He says, you could do well as a college teacher,

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you really ought to pursue, you know, an advanced degree as soon as possible and take a look at that as a career. And, you know, I looked around, it looked like a pretty nice thing. I mean, the professors there had a schedule that allowed them to be in

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their studio and make art. And, you know, it was a dignified, respected profession. So... So I only chose schools that were in university towns because I knew I wanted

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to start an advanced degree right away. And I did that first year in '66. Ron Matlon: And you said when you came here it was called Towson State College. Jim Paulsen: Yeah.

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Towson State College. Ron Matlon: What were your impressions when you first got to Towson State College? Jim Paulsen: I just thought it was a wonderful place. It was a sleepy little teachers college, you know, and, you know,

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everybody went down to Newell Hall for lunch in those days. If you went to the bookstore, you got a discount on anything, not only just books, but, you know. Athletics was, you know, wanting, you know, the competitive athletic programs were

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just beginning really. I think '69 was the first year they had football. You know, I've always been interested in athletics. So that was something that I've watched over the years grow and become better and

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better, you know, as the university grew, as the school grew. Ron Matlon: How many years were you on the faculty here? Jim Paulsen: I was here 43 years. Ron Matlon: 43 years. And it was always called the art department throughout those 43 years?

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Jim Paulsen: Well, at one point, about 20 years ago, it would have been... It became a weird thing, the art education, and they tried to encompass everything, you know, and I don't even remember now exactly, but we all called it the art department.

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Ron Matlon: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what kind of courses did you teach? Jim Paulsen: I was very fortunate to always teach the kinds of things I wanted to teach, which were the three-dimensional courses.

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I mean, I was trained as a sculptor. I've always thought of myself as a sculptor. And so right from the get go I was able to teach 3D design and sculpture. In fact, even in the very early days in '69,

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I was lucky enough to teach graduates. And that's something that is rare. In most schools, you've got to be on the faculty for a long time and you have to have an advanced degree before they allow you to teach graduate level.

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But Towson at that time did not have an MFA program. I mean, the MFA program came in at '84, '85, I think, but at that point we had what they call the MED program, Master of Education in Art. And I had graduate students that I worked with and that was great.

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So I paid my dues with some of the survey courses. There was a survey course called Art in the Culture in those days. The students sort of lovingly referred to it as Art in the Dark because the teacher

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would turn the lights out the minute they walked in the room and start showing slides, you know? So, but I taught a few sections of art in the dark to pay my dues, so to speak.

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But for the most part I was I was lucky enough to teach 3-dimensional. Ron Matlon: Did you ever create any sculptures with your students? Jim Paulsen: Not here, but I did in '97, '98, I did a an exchange to the University of Oldenburg in Oldenburg, Germany.

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And I worked it out in the beginning that I wanted to build a large-scale sculpture with the involvement of the students. And that happened. When I went to the University of Oldenburg, the Dean put me in touch with several

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members of the community and I ended up actually doing three sculptures and one of them was directly involved with the students. In fact, the piece was cast in bronze and I had all the students who worked on it sign it, you know.

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Ron Matlon: Wonderful. I'm curious, then, what's your favorite piece of sculpture of all time? Jim Paulsen: You mean of my work? Ron Matlon: Well, first, I guess first of your work and then of someone else's.

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Jim Paulsen: It's tough. That's a tough one. You know, I guess it's like a writer or a playwright or something like that.

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You're always looking for your... The next one is your best one. You know, I mean, I think probably when I went to England on a Fulbright exchange back in '92, I met people... Well, at that point in time, a group called Sustrans was located in

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Bristol where I was teaching. I was teaching at the University of the West of England in Bristol and I went to a gallery opening and I met the director of Sustrans. Sustrans is the group that that puts these trails together, old rail trails,

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sort of like here in the Baltimore area, we have the North Central Trail and the one between Baltimore and Annapolis, but these are old rail trails that are converted to hiker biker trails. The gentleman who was head of all of the trails throughout England was located

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there in Bristol. And I got to talking to him at this opening and he says, well, can I see some of your work? And so I invited him around and I did a little slide presentation of my sculpture

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and he says we want three of them. I said, three? And I said... This was already in the fall of '92 and I was only there until August of '93.

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So I said, well, we'll start and we'll see what happens. So I made a 12-footer and we installed it on the trail and they loved it. And he says, now can you do the other two?

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And I said, I don't think I have enough time to do two. But I said, why don't we do one that's really large, one that straddles the trail so that the bikers and hikers and walkers would walk through the piece.

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And he thought that was a great idea. So that probably is my all time favorite piece because the heroic size of this piece, you know, to be able to walk through your work was particularly exciting to me.

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I mean, I've done other works now since then that are very large that you can walk through, but that was the first. Ron Matlon: Now, what about a piece of sculpture from another artist?

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Do you have a favorite piece? Jim Paulsen: Oh goodness. You know, not necessarily a singular piece, but I'm very fond of the work of Henry Moore.

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Now Henry Moore, of course, is the 50s, you know, primarily 40s, 50s, 60s. But there's one piece that's located on the Thames River right in front of what they call now the Tate Britain. It's called Locking Piece.

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It's a bronze piece where the... It's probably one of my favorite pieces, but I've always been fond of Henry Moore as a sculptor. Ron Matlon: Yeah, me too. Let's come back to Towson for a moment.

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Were you... Did you ever have an administrative position at Towson? Jim Paulsen: You know, I kind of avoided that to some extent, although over the years I became the program director for the 3D sculpture

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area. So in a sense, I was head of the sculpture program. I had one brief semester as chair of the department when Jim Flood went on a sabbatical and he asked me to take over for one semester.

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And that was an interesting thing for me because I realized this is a job I never want. You know, I did that job for one semester. And you know, my very, very wonderful people in the art office,

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when I the semester was over, they gave me a cup. And the cup says take this job and shove it because they knew that it was something that I did, you know, to support the team, but it wasn't something I really wanted to do.

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Ron Matlon: Now, over those 43... Is it 43 years you were... OK. Over those 43 years, what changes did you see take place at this university? Jim Paulsen: Well, I saw a lot of change. I mean, again, the athletic program went from almost

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nothing to impressive. You know, the building program, the the incredible facilities all over. We went from Van Bokkelen Hall, a tiny little space, to this building. And I opened this building twice, in '73 when it first was built and then again it

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was renovated in 'O4, 'O5. And we opened it again. You know, it's a magnificent structure that, you know, does so much in terms of the arts.

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The status of the university as a whole. We went from Towson State College to Towson State University to just Towson University over those years. And it's now a respected, impressive, comprehensive university. And so...

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Ron Matlon: You've seen many logos change. Jim Paulsen: Oh yes, yes, I have. Ron Matlon: Are you still teaching? Jim Paulsen: Well, you know, my son told me, he says, dad,

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he says, you're a born teacher. And I said, I think you're right. I said, I love teaching. And although I'm really happy not to be in a teaching

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environment where I have end of the year reports, faculty meetings, you know, occasional faculty bickering, all of the negatives that come with higher education teaching. But I love working with students and I've

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been now, for the last four years, I've been teaching at the Bykota Center, which is a senior center. And they asked me, they said, well, what do you want in the way of salary? And I said, Gee, I hadn't thought of that.

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I said, what do they normally pay? And I can't remember what the figure was, but it was appalling. I thought, why bother, you know? So I said, I'll just do the class free.

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So, so I've been teaching a free class. It's my way, one small way I can give back a little bit and I love it.

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I mean, the seniors that come in there are eager, they're serious, you know, they're very appreciative. You know, it's a great place to teach and I love showing people stuff.

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I get a kick out of that. So, yeah. So I'm going to continue to do that as long as I can. During the pandemic, I even taught it on Zoom.

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Ron Matlon: To the seniors at Bykota? Jim Paulsen: To the seniors, yeah. I had a small camera and I worked with a card table behind me. And we did it.

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It worked. Ron Matlon: Wonderful. Jim Paulsen: Yeah. It was great. Ron Matlon: Over the time that you were here those 43 years,

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did you see any changes in the students that you were teaching? Jim Paulsen: Well, yes, the biggest change, and the change has really taken place since I retired, but I would say over the last 6 to 8 years,

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the demographic has changed tremendously. It's much more, you know, universal in terms of ethnicity and racial makeup and so forth. When I first started here, if I got one African American student,

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that was unusual. By the time I left in 2012, I got maybe two or three in a classroom. Today, I think that African American students roughly are around 50% of the student body and that's very healthy for the

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university. So yeah, there's a lot. You know, also from my personal perspective in the area of art, the changes took place in waves.

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For example, in the late 80s, we had an incredibly good student body in the art department. Students were demanding from their faculty group critiques where they wanted faculty participating.

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This is outside the classroom. And, you know, students back in the early days, and I'm talking about the the 80s primarily, students used to jimmy the windows so they could sneak in at night and work.

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By the 90s and later we had a program where we had paid monitors and the studio was open all the time and we couldn't beg students to come in. So that was a big difference there, the fact that the students were really,

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really more interested in spending the time in the studio. And I don't know what the reason for that is. Maybe economically they had to work outside of the class, you know. Ron Matlon: If you could start your career again,

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would you do anything differently? Jim Paulsen: No, not really. You know, you roll with the punches. Things come along.

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The Vietnam War was a big factor in the kind of students we got and the volume of students, the fact that people were in some cases coming to school just to avoid being drafted, you know. So things happen that are beyond either my control or the university's control,

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you know? No, I probably, you know, would approach it somewhat the same way, you know. Ron Matlon: Has the pedagogy in your field changed over the years?

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Jim Paulsen: Well, yes, to the extent that the computer has become an important part and digital learning is really important. I was one of the first ones to put in the curriculum to require the sculpture

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measures to take 3D programming, 3D modeling as a course because I saw that this is the sculpture world of tomorrow, meaning now today, students have to be much more savvy with the computer and with the 3D modeling.

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It's not enough just to be able to make the work. You've got to then take this work and place it somewhere where it works in an environment and through the computer you can do that. You know, I mean, by the time I retired,

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I could take my sculpture and place it on a plinth at Trafalgar Square in London, you see. And that's a huge difference, you know, So, yeah, the computer was the big thing.

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And of course, our "toys," our tools became more and more sophisticated. We went from, in the early days, we only had a gas welder and a small arc welder.

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And gradually we graduated to MIG welders and TIG welders and, you know, more sophisticated tools like planers and joiners and things like that. Ron Matlon: So how does the faculty member adjust to all those changes in preparing for classes?

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Jim Paulsen: Well, I mean, in my case, I welcomed it because I was aware of what these things could do, this additional equipment. We went through a period where we couldn't afford anything. And then all of a sudden... The big factor was student fees.

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Now student fees are also... They have a negative side in the sense that they add more economic burden on the students. But in those days, the infrastructure in the art department was falling apart and the students were canvassed and they were asked if you

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want to to have student fees or do you want to just continue to limp along without the proper equipment. And they chose the fees, you know, so the equipment was a big factor. I mean, the infrastructure for my area is really

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integral to what you can do in the classroom, what you can teach. The 3D lab, the printing lab today is phenomenal. The fact that we can do stereo lithography and all the other things we do with rapid prototyping, you know, all of that is within the last 10 years.

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Ron Matlon: Is there any risk factor to the students who are taking art classes? And if so, how is that accommodated? Jim Paulsen: You say a risk factor. Ron Matlon: Risk factor, Yeah.

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Is there anything dangerous that could happen to a student who's working in sculpture? Jim Paulsen: Well, you know, a lot of the equipment has the capability of being dangerous.

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I mean, a lot of the things that we use for making sculpture require ear defenders, you know, to protect your hearing. There's obviously the tools that can, you know, cut people and, you know,

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harm people. Those have got to be, you know, used properly, they've got to be... The students have got to be shown how to use them safely. And so health and safety is more of an issue today than it was in the

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old days before we had all that equipment, the dangerous equipment. Ron Matlon: Now, what careers are these students preparing for? Jim Paulsen: Well, that's an interesting question because we

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have always competed in the 3D area with other parts of our program for our majors. And we've always told the sculpture majors that at least we can teach you some skills that you can go out and make a living, you know. But

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the big draw for art majors, always, even way back in the very beginning, when I first came here, it was what in those days we called commercial art, you know, but graphic design and computer generated art is where the majors are.

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You know, even today, you know, you'll have maybe 30 painting majors and 300 graphic design majors, you know. But, you know, like I say, we in the 3D area feel that we can prepare students not to just be independent sculptors and, you know, hang up their shingle and say,

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I'm a sculptor and, you know, this is what I can do for you. This is what I can make for you. Sculpture majors can be involved in design, in interior design and architectural design.

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You know, one of my majors made a brilliant career out of doing display for, you know, different conferences and things like that. You know, he has a career in display.

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One of my sculpture majors made a career out of doing decorative castings, concrete castings, patios, things like that. Had a business of it. Two of my students were very successful in the toy design industry and

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they learned their skills here and went on to... Both of them went to Hasbro toy company. For a while we even had a... Hasbro had a a toy design class here that our students would go to Hasbro in the summers as interns.

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Ron Matlon: Now, when you first came here, this was basically a teacher's college. And what I didn't hear you say when you talked about careers was that you're preparing students to become teachers in the elementary or middle or secondary schools.

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Was it that way back when you first came and then it changed to more professional careers in the in art later? Jim Paulsen: Absolutely, Yeah. Because although I must admit that over the years, the

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art education students were some of my best sculpture students. I've never understood why. But when I would get in my sculpture classes students who were, you know, whose primary major was art education,

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frequently they were really good sculpture students, you know. But yeah, in the early days, back in the 70s and so forth, most of the students found their work in teaching. And today only a small margin of them.

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Ron Matlon: Is that because there are fewer jobs in teaching in your field? Jim Paulsen: No, I think in fact there are jobs that are going really, you know, I think the education people are really needing students.

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It's just that students just prefer to do other things. You know, it's a wider range of opportunities for them, particularly in the digital world. Ron Matlon: Big question about the future.

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Where do you see Towson University 10 years from now, 20 years from now? Where do you see this university? Jim Paulsen: I think it'll... It's only good. I mean, it's heading in the right direction.

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I think it has a great future, you know, and I think just... It's like if you go to the doctor and all the signs are positive, he says to you, or she says to you, just keep doing what you're doing. And that's what I would say to Towson University.

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Just keep doing what you're doing and just try to keep doing it better and better. Ron Matlon: And what about you? Are you still making sculpture and will you do so in the future?

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Jim Paulsen: I am. I still get to the studio and one of the things I've been enjoying doing over the last, say, 10 years is I like working large and I like doing outdoor works.

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And what's happened is a lot of municipalities around the nation in fact, but even particularly in our area, towns want public sculpture on display. And rather than buying it, what they do is they in effect rent it.

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They have programs where they have a grant of a certain amount of money and they have a competition and they have anywhere from 6 to 10 artists come in every year. And some of these programs are two years.

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So they have a different group coming in each year and they're overlapping. And you basically go and install a piece in a public space in that community and they pay you a nice honorarium for it. One of the best is Howard County.

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But I've had work displayed at Howard County. I had a piece displayed in Charlottesville. They had a program called Art in Place, I think it was called. And I had a piece in Bristol, Tennessee.

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They had a program called Art in Public Places. There's a... I'm going to install a piece in March in a community south of Pittsburgh that will have one of my large 12-foot sculptures for a year.

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So I've been doing a lot of that. Ron Matlon: Do you do that work at home or do you come to the university to do that? No, I usually hire people to help me knock them down because they're 12 feet, you know,

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and I'm getting more and more feeble, you know, I mean, making a large work at my age now is much more difficult. But I usually get help and we knock a piece... Well, first of all, I spruce it up, I clean it up, I maybe repaint parts of it.

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I knock it down. I load it in my truck. I'll take it off to this location South of Pittsburgh, and they'll have a crew of people there that'll meet me to help me erect it.

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Ron Matlon: I'm seeing an article in the Baltimore Sun that says you were a Towson sculptor doing something for the first time in China. What's that all about? Jim Paulsen: Well, first of all, I need to preface it by saying that

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a guy came to me and he said he had a Chinese sculptor who was eminently famous and capable and would you consider having him here at Towson as an artist in residence? And I took a good look at it and I said I think that this could enhance our program

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tremendously. So I set about to have this Chinese sculptor come to Towson and it took a lot of work. We had letters to Sarbanes at the time, to Ben Cardin.

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We, you know, did a lot of prefacing to get this artist here. We finally got him to come to Towson. He turned out to be a brilliant sculptor.

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He was a guy who worked on the Tiananmen Square sculptures. He also worked for several years on the terracotta warriors in Xi'an. And over the years that he was here, he said that you should consider

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designing a sculpture for this place in China. And I said, how do I go about that? And he connected me with a company called the Dunhuang Art Company Limited. I submitted to them some images, the first drawings and then maquettes of

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a sculpture that would be located in Beijing in front of the Hilton Hotel. And they came back to me and they said, we like your ideas, but what does it mean? And I thought to myself, well, it's kind of art for art's sake.

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I'm thinking along the lines of David Smith. I'm thinking of large abstract shapes. OK.

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And they didn't cotton on to that. They wanted to know... It had to have meaning. And so I kept going back and forth, back and forth.

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And finally they liked what I did, but they wanted me to come to China prior to billing. So they sent me an airline ticket and I went to Beijing and I realized what the problem was.

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The sculpture that I had designed and submitted to them, they didn't quite understand what it was about. And also they had a guy, another artist within their company who had manipulated my design to the point where the people at the Hilton Hotel

00:35:36.120 - 00:35:55.560

didn't like it. And so I had to come over and figure out what I was going to do, how I was going to change it. So I came up with this concept of of three abstract letters, an F, a P and a U.

00:35:55.560 - 00:36:06.520

The F was backwards. The P was straight on. And these, of course, were highly abstracted. And then the U encircled them.

00:36:07.000 - 00:36:16.200

And the concept was peace, friendship and unity. And they loved it. They loved it. Ron Matlon: And is that the title of the piece?

00:36:16.200 - 00:36:32.170

Jim Paulsen: Yeah, yeah. Peace, Friendship and unity. The U encircled the P and the F and I had to get it back to the original design that I had submitted that was more geometric and left China

00:36:32.170 - 00:36:47.880

thinking, well, these guys are going to make whatever they want, you know, because the thing... Also they wanted it more organic, you know, and I said, well, you want it in stainless steel.

00:36:47.880 - 00:36:58.520

And you know, I'm thinking you can't make it organic in stainless. You've got to... I'm thinking more like David Smith or I'm thinking of the way big tanker trucks are made.

00:36:58.520 - 00:37:12.990

You know, they're basically rolled in one direction. So you've got a... But you don't have compound curves like a basketball would be a compound curve. Well, then they took me to the factory there in

00:37:12.990 - 00:37:28.720

China where they make this stuff and I'm thinking big rolling mills and big benders and, you know, the kind of thing we would have here. No, they had 12 guys in a row hammering this stainless steel like you would make a teapot.

00:37:29.280 - 00:37:43.000

And it was quite an enlightening moment for me because those are skills that I don't think anybody in this country has anymore, you know, that would have been something done at the turn of the century, you know, last century.

00:37:43.680 - 00:38:03.720

So I learned something. They learned something and I left China and a year later the piece was unveiled and I flew into Beijing and, you know, arrived at the Hilton Hotel and here it is.

00:38:03.720 - 00:38:21.700

It's fantastic. It's exactly the way I left it, with that... And I met with the... The article you're referring to is that the Sun had a correspondent there in Beijing and the

00:38:21.700 - 00:38:37.920

people at Dunhuang Art Company told him that this is the first sculpture designed by an American in the People's Republic of China. And I thought, well, that's cool. I didn't realize that.

00:38:39.160 - 00:38:59.800

And then I met up with a friend of mine in England about a year later, and he had made a sculpture in China, and they told him the same thing. So I don't know how much credibility there is to the fact that this the first, but it sounded good, you know. But it was a great experience.

00:38:59.960 - 00:39:04.240

Ron Matlon: Is the sculpture still there? Jim Paulsen: Oh, yeah. It's stainless steel. It's 22 feet high.

00:39:05.000 - 00:39:19.200

And... And like I say, when I corrected the maquette to the point where the... The people who owned the hotel were Iceland people, and they then liked what the changes were.

00:39:19.760 - 00:39:33.840

And it's... If you know, for example, there's a big Henry Moore in front of the National Art Gallery in Washington, big Henry Moore. And if you look at it closely, you can see a seam right in the middle

00:39:33.840 - 00:39:46.770

where it was welded together. And I've always been bothered by that. You know, these guys in China, there are no seams. This thing was was made in sheets hammered together,

00:39:46.770 - 00:39:59.000

if you can imagine, and then welded together. And there are no seams. It's absolutely brilliant. The thing looks like it was planished like a teapot, you know.

00:39:59.000 - 00:40:07.560

So it was a great experience. Ron Matlon: It would great to see the leaders of China and the leaders of the United States stand by that statue with that message.

00:40:07.800 - 00:40:23.400

It now has meaning. Jim Paulsen: Yeah. Those were different times. I mean, this was '94, '95, and, you know, China was very eager to have cultural exchanges with the US and so forth.

00:40:23.920 - 00:40:33.600

That has all changed now, you know, sadly. Ron Matlon: Well, I just want to say thank you very much for a wonderful time that I got to spend with you and a much happiness in the future.

00:40:34.120 - 00:40:35.560

Jim Paulsen: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.