Interview with Jim Paulsen

Narrator: 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, 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. 00:30 RM: Greetings. I'm Ron Matlon, Professor Emeritus from the Department of Mass Communication and Communication Studies. Our guest today is Jim Paulsen, Professor Emeritus from the Department of Art. Welcome, Jim. And we're going to start at the very beginning. Where were you born? JP: I was born in a place called Clinton, Iowa. It’s right on the Mississippi River, and I spent, what, two and a half years there. And then we moved downriver to the Quad Cities and I kind of grew up in that area. 01:02 RM: And let's jump ahead a bit. What colleges and universities did you attend? JP: Well, as an Illinois boy, I went to Western Illinois University for undergraduate and then after I got a teaching degree at Western, I got a job teaching art in the public schools of DeKalb, Illinois, which is where Northern Illinois University is. So I pursued an M.A. degree at Northern, and I was there for four years teaching in the local school system and was pursuing the M.A. And then when I came out to Maryland much later, I did an MFA at the University of Delaware. 01:48 RM: What years were you at these different institutions? JP: Well, my early schooling, the undergraduate through graduate—through the M.A.—was 1961 to ’65 at Western, and then ’66 to ’69 at Northern Illinois. And then in ’69 I came to Towson University…well, I came to Towson State College and I only had the M.A. degree. I was in an M.F.A. 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. It was a great opportunity for me. But I only had an M.A. 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 the case of my field, an M.F.A., you weren't going any further. And I had already gotten to Associate Professorship by ’84, and so I packed it in and got a sabbatical and went off to the University of Delaware. And I was there for two years at the University of Delaware. 03:24 RM: So at some point along that road, you decided you wanted a career in higher education. Why? JP: I don't know. When I was a senior at Western Illinois, I had an instructor who he kept telling me, he says, you could do well as a college teacher. He says, you really ought to pursue 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 their studio and make art. And, you know, it was a dignified, respected profession. So I only chose schools that were in university towns. RM: Mm hmm. JP: When I left Western, I applied only to school systems where there was a university, because I knew I wanted to start an advanced degree right away. And I did it that first year in ’66. 04:34 RM: And you said when you came here, it was called Towson State College. JP: Yeah, Towson State College. 04:38 RM: What were your impressions when you first got to Towson State College? JP: Oh, I just thought it was a wonderful place. It was a sleepy little teachers college, you know. 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. Athletics was, you know, wanting. The competitive athletic programs were just beginning. I think ’69 was the first year they had football. And, 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 better. You know, as the university grew. As the school grew. 05:32 RM: How many years were you on the faculty here? JP: I was here 43 years. RM: 43 years? JP: Yeah. 05:37 RM: And it was always called the Art Department throughout those 43 years? JP: Yeah. Well at one point, about 20 years ago it would have been, it became a weird thing. The art, art education, and… They try to encompass everything, you know. And I don't even remember now exactly, but we all called it the Art Department. Yeah. 06:06 RM: And what kind of courses did you teach? JP: I was very fortunate to always teach the kinds of things I wanted to teach, which were the three dimensional courses. 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 and in ’69, 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. But Towson at that time did not have an M.F.A. program. I mean, the M.F.A. program came in at ’84 or ’85, I think. But at that point we had what they call the M.Ed. program, Master of Education in Art. And I had graduate students that I worked with, and that was great. I paid my dues with some of the survey courses. There was a survey course called Art and the Culture in those days. The students sort of lovingly referred to it as Art in the Dark because the teacher would turn the lights out the minute they walked in the room and start showing slides, you know. But I taught a few sections of Art in the Dark to pay my dues, so to speak. But for the most part, I was lucky enough to teach three dimensional. 07:51 RM: Did you ever create any sculptures with your students? JP: Um, not here, but I did. In ’97-’98, I did an exchange to the University of Oldenburg in Oldenburg, Germany. 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 members of the community, and I ended up actually doing three sculptures. 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. RM: Wonderful. JP: Yeah. 08:53 RM: I’m curious, then, what’s your favorite piece of sculpture of all time? JP: You mean of my work? RM: Well, I guess first of your work, and then of someone else's work. JP: That’s tough. That’s a tough one. I guess it's like a writer or a playwright or something like that. You're always looking for your… Your next one is your best one, you know. 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 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 puts these trails together, old rail trails. 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. And the gentleman who is head of all of the trails throughout England was located 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, 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. 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? 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? And he thought that was a great idea. So that probably is my all time favorite piece because the heroic size of this piece. To be able to walk through your work was particularly exciting to me. And I've done other works now since then that are very large that you can walk through. But that was the first. 11:36 RM: What about a piece of sculpture from another artist? Do you have a favorite piece? JP: Oh, goodness. You know, not necessarily a singular piece, but I'm very fond of the work of Henry Moore. Now, Henry Moore, of course, is the fifties, you know, primarily—forties, fifties, sixties. 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. It's a bronze piece. It’s probably one of my favorite pieces. But I've always been fond of Henry Moore as a sculptor. 12:18 RM: Yeah, me too. Let's come back to Towson for a moment. Did you ever have an administrative position at Towson? JP: You know, I kind of avoided that to some extent. Although over the years, I became the program director for the 3D sculpture 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. 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 wonderful people in the art office, when 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 to support the team, but it wasn't something I really wanted to do. 13:29 RM: Now, over those 43 years, what changes did you see take place at this university? JP: Well, I saw a lot of change. I mean, again, the athletic program went from almost nothing to impressive. The building program, 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 was renovated in ’04-’05 and we opened it again. And it’s a magnificent structure that does so much in terms of the arts. Just 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. RM: You’ve seen many logos change. JP: Oh, yes. Yes, I have. 14:53 RM: Are you still teaching? JP: Well, you know, my son told me, he says, “Dad, you're a born teacher.” And I says, “I think you're right.” I said, “I love teaching.” And although I'm really happy not to be in a teaching environment where I have end of the year reports, faculty meetings, occasional faculty bickering and all of the negatives that come with higher education teaching. But I love working with students, and for the last four years I've been teaching at the Bykota Center, which is a senior center. And they asked me, “Well, what do you want in the way of salary?” And I said, “Gee, I hadn't thought of that.” 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. So I've been teaching a free class. It's one small way I can give back a little bit. And I love it. I mean, the seniors that come in there are eager, they're serious, they’re very appreciative. It's a great place to teach. And I love showing people stuff. 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 to the seniors. I had a small camera and I worked with a card table behind me and we did it. It worked. RM: Wonderful. JP: Yeah, it was great. 16:49 RM: Over those 43 years, did you see any changes in the students that you were teaching? JP: 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, the demographic has changed tremendously. It's much more universal in terms of ethnicity and racial makeup and so forth. When I first started here, if I got one African-American student, 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 university. So, yeah. You know, also from my personal perspective in the in the area of art, the changes took place in waves. For example, in the late eighties, we had an incredibly good student body in the art department. Students were demanding from their faculty group-critiques—where they wanted faculty participating. This is outside the classroom. And, the students back in the early days—and I'm talking about the eighties primarily—students used to jimmy the windows so they could sneak in at night and work. By the nineties and later we had a program where we had paid monitors and the studio was open all the time. We couldn't beg students to come in. So that was a big difference there. The fact that the students were really, 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. 19:26 RM: If you could start your career again, would you do anything differently? JP: No, not really. You know, you roll with the punches, things come along. 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. So things happen that are beyond either my control or the university's control. Um, no, I probably would approach it somewhat the same way. 20:17 RM: Has the pedagogy in your field changed over the years? JP: 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 majors to take a 3D programing/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. 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. I mean, by the time I retired, I could take my sculpture and place it on a plinth at Trafalgar Square in London, you see. And that's a that's a huge difference, you know. Yeah, the computer was the big thing. And of course, our “toys,” our tools became more and more sophisticated. In the early days, we only had a gas welder and a small arc welder. And gradually we graduated to MIG welders and TIG welders and, you know, more sophisticated tools like planers and joiners and things like that. 22:05 RM: So how does the faculty member adjust to all those changes in preparing for classes? 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. Now student fees 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 canvased. They were ask, do you want to have student fees or do you want to just continue to limp along without the proper equipment? And they chose the fees. So the equipment was a big factor. I mean, the infrastructure for my area is really 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 stereolithography and all the other things we do with rapid prototyping. All of that has been within the last ten years. 23:36 RM: Is there any risk factor to the students who are taking art classes? And if so, how is that accommodated? JP: You say a risk factor? RM: A risk factor, yeah. Is there anything dangerous that could happen to a student who's working in sculpture? JP: Well, you know, a lot of the equipment has the capability of being dangerous. I mean, a lot of the things that we use for making sculpture require ear defenders so as to protect your hearing. There's obviously the tools that can cut people and harm people. They’ve got to be used properly. The students have got to be shown how to use them safely. So health and safety is more of an issue today than it was in the old days before we had all that equipment, the dangerous equipment. 24:40 RM: Now, what careers are these students preparing for? JP: Well, that's an interesting question, because we have always competed in the 3D area with other parts of our program and for our majors. And we've always told the sculpture majors that the least we can teach you some skills that you could go out and make a living. The big draw for art majors, even way back in the very beginning when I first came here, was what in those days we called commercial art. But graphic design and computer generated art is where the majors are, even today. You’ll have maybe 30 painting majors and 300 graphic design majors. Like I say, we in the 3D area feel that we can prepare students not to just be independent sculptors and hang up their shingle and say, “I'm a sculptor and this is what I can do for you. This is what I can make for you.” Um, sculpture majors can be involved in design and in interior design and architectural design. One of my majors made a brilliant career out of doing display for different conferences and things like that. He has a career in display. One of my sculpture majors made a career out of doing decorative concrete castings, patios, things like that—had a business of it. Two of my students were very successful in the toy design industry and they learned their skills here and both of them went to Hasbro Toy Company. For a while Hasbro had a toy design class here that our students would go to Hasbro in the summers as interns. 27:31 RM: Now when you first came here this was basically a teacher's college. What I didn't hear you say when you talked about careers was that you were preparing students to become teachers in the elementary or middle or secondary schools. Was it that way when you first came and then it changed to more professional careers in art? JP: Absolutely, yeah. Although I must admit that over the years, the art education students were some of my best sculpture students. I never understood why. But when I would get in my sculpture classes, students whose primary major was art education, frequently they were really good sculpture students. But yeah, in the early days, back in the seventies and so forth, most of the students found their work in teaching. Today, only a small margin of them do. 28:37 RM: Is that because there are fewer jobs in teaching in your field? JP: No, I think, in fact the education people are really needing students. It's just that students just prefer to do other things. It's a wider range of opportunities for them, particularly in the digital world. 29:01 RM: Big question about the future. Where do you see Towson University ten years from now, 20 years from now? Where do you see this university? JP: I think it's only good. I mean, it's heading in the right direction. I think it has a great future. 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. Just keep doing what you're doing and just try to keep doing it better and better. 29:42 RM: And what about you? Are you still making sculpture? JP: I am. I still get to the studio. One of the things I've been enjoying doing over the last, say, ten years is… I like working large and I like doing outdoor works. And what's happened is a lot of municipalities around the nation and 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. 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. 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. But I've had work displayed in 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. They had a program called Art in Public Places. 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. So I've been doing a lot of that. 31:41 RM: Do you do that work at home or do you come to the university to do that? JP: No, I usually hire people to help me knock them down because there are 12 feet, you know, and I'm getting more and more feeble. Making large work at my age now is much more difficult, but I usually get help. Well, first of all, I spruce it up, I clean it up. I maybe repaint parts of it. 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. 32:24 RM: 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? JP: Well, first of all, I need to preface it by saying that 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 tremendously. So, I set about to have this Chinese sculptor come to Towson. It took a lot of work. We had letters to Sarbanes at the time, to Ben Cardin. We 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. 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 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 Dunhuong Art Company Ltd. I submitted to them some images, at first drawings and then maquettes of 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. I'm thinking along the lines of David Smith. I'm thinking of large abstract shapes. And they didn't cottoned on to that. They wanted to know if it had meaning. So, I kept going back and forth, back and forth. And finally they liked what I did, but they wanted me to come to China prior to building. So they sent me an airline ticket. I went to Beijing and I realized what the problem was. The sculpture that I had designed and submitted to them, they didn't quite understand what it was about. And also, they had another artist within their company who had manipulated my design to the point where the people at the Hilton Hotel 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. I came up with this concept of three abstract letters, an F, a P and a U. The F was back backwards. The P was straight on. And these, of course were highly abstracted. And then the U encircled them. And the concept was peace, friendship and unity. And they loved it. They loved it. 36:12 RM: And is that the title of the piece? JP: 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’d submitted that was more geometric. And left China thinking, well, these guys are going to make whatever they want. Also, they wanted it more organic, you know, and \I said, well, you want it in stainless steel and, you know, I'm thinking you can't make it organic in stainless. I'm thinking more like David Smith or I'm thinking of the way the big tanker trucks are made. You know, they're basically rolled in one direction. 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 China where they make this stuff and I'm thinking big rolling mills and big benders; 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. And it was quite an enlightening moment for me, because those are skills that I don't think anybody in this country has anymore. That would have been something done at the turn of the century, you know, last century. So I learned something, they learned something, and I left China. A year later the piece was unveiled. And I flew into Beijing and, you know, arrived at the Hilton Hotel. And here it is. It's fantastic. It's exactly the way I left it. RM: Great. JP: The article you're referring to is… The Sun had a correspondent in Beijing, and the people at Dunhuang Art Company told him that this is the first sculpture designed by an America in the People's Republic of China. And I thought, well, that's cool. I didn't realize that. 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. But it was a great experience. 38:57 RM: Is the sculpture still there? JP: Oh, yeah, it's stainless steel. It's 22 feet high. And like I say, when I corrected the maquette to the point where the people who owned the hotel were Iceland people, and they then liked what the changes were. If you know, for example, there's a big Henry Moore in front of the National Art Gallery in Washington. And if you look closely, you can see a seam right in the middle where it was welded together. And I've always been bothered by that. These guys in China, there are no seams. This thing was made in sheets hammered together, 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. So it was a great experience. 40:00 RM: It would be great to see the leaders of China and the leaders of the United States stand by that statue with that message. JP: Yeah those were different times I mean this was ’94-’95. And you know, China was very eager to have cultural exchanges with the U.S. and so forth. That has all changed now, you know, sadly. 40:25 RM: Well, I just want to say thank you very much for a wonderful time that I got to spend with you and much happiness in the future. Thank you. JP: Thank you. Yeah.