Art show explores symbiotic relationship of painting and cinema

Between Patricia Patterson's "Patricia and Codin" and the late Manny Farber's "No Pencil" still life, stand artists Leslie Nemour, Jim Randall, Patterson and Bill Mosley at an exhibit at the Hyde Art Gallery on the Grossmont College campus

EL CAJON--An art exhibit to be shown through Thursday, Dec. 12, at Grossmont College's Hyde Art Gallery explores how artists are influenced by their mentors.  The works of five artists are examined, including those of the late Manny Farber and Patricia Patterson, a husband-and-wife team who inspired the works and careers of the three other artists represented in the exhibit.

The three "mentees," who today are successful artists in their own right,  are Bill Mosley, today an art instructor at Grossmont College; Leslie Nemour, who likewise teaches art at Miracosta College, and Jim Randall, who is a practicing artist in New York City.  All three took classes from Farber and Patterson when they were on the faculty at UCSD.  Farber and Patterson taught that paintings and films could mutually influence each other, and  the works of Mosley, Nemour and Randall, help to demonstrate that relationship.

Mentors Farber and Patterson

For this, the late Manny Farber is chiefly responsible as he was both a painter and a movie critic, whose reviews were published regularly in such prestigious magazines as New Republic, The Nation, Artforum and Art in America. Farber's reviews rarely dealt with the plots of the movies but rather focused on themes, movements, colors, and other aspects of the cinematographer’s art.  He looked at films the way a painter would examine paintings and he studied paintings from the perspective of a film maker, according to Mosley. 

When Farber was 49 and already an established critic, he was introduced to Patterson, about whom famed photographer Helen Leavitt wrote to him, "I met this young girl and I think the two of you would like each other." Patterson was 25 at the time, but their age difference mattered little, so transported  were the couple by each other's art and outlooks on life.  Very soon after meeting, they became married collaborators--she, of Irish background, whose paintings explored her ancestral country, and he the son of Jewish immigrants who had set down roots in Douglas, Arizona.

Growing up in the small town of Douglas, her husband had seen every movie that came to the two movie houses, Patterson said.  “He was born in 1917 so we are talking about very early film. He started out with the silent movies.”  Farber also frequented the town’s library, “where he would study writing – how writing was done.  He was a very, very hard worker.” 

In the entry exhibit space of the Hyde Gallery are two large paintings by these mentors -- a 26" by 40" still life by Farber entitled "No Film" and a 4'2 x 65" scene by Patterson which she titled "Patricia and Coidin" after a couple who had been her hosts in Ireland.  Patterson was an advocate of artists painting what was familiar to them, rather than forcing themselves to try to make some big statement.

As curated by Grossmont College's Prudence Horne, the balance of the exhibit space in the gallery is devoted to the works of Mosley, Nemour and Randall.  Each of these artists spoke about how film affects their painting.  While their subjects are quite different, there are some similarities in how Mosley, Nemour and Randall go about their paintings.  All three of them begin either with the images they find in movies or on still film.  All three of them typically will draw or paint a small, test version of the work that they ultimately will create.

Grossmont College instructor Bill Mosley stands by his freeway bridge series

William Mosley

Mosley likes to paint different kinds of landscapes. Instead of those that view a scene from a horizontal perspective, as most people are used to seeing, his studies look down from the air toward the ground.  At the gallery, a sequence of three large paintings gives us the sense of approaching, flying directly over, and departing from the airspace above the Interstate 805 freeway bridge as it crosses over Interstate 8 in Mission Valley. 

Using the photos he took on a helicopter ride—along with images from Google Satellite photos—Mosley paints and repaints the scene, varying the perspective.

Leslie Nemour poses by one of her 'Fistfight' series

Leslie Nemour

Nemour had a dozen paintings on display in the gallery, all of them involving fistfights, wrestling matches or other types of physical violence. The images are intentionally blurred to give the sense that the depiction “is not forever, it is moving, it is changing and it is a moment in time,” she explained. 

The paintings are not a glorification of violence, but to the contrary are an effort to come to terms with it, she said.  “I am kind of making it into something else; I am making it symbolic of more contemporary kinds of fights, which are struggles for belief systems.” The fight scenes are intriguingly titled as battles over Feminism (the only one in which the subjects are women), Realism, Obama Care, Gay Marriage, Roe vs. Wade (abortion), Futurism and Cubism.   A companion piece, “Fight Over Conceptual Art,” has a perplexed woman holding her face in her hands. 

Jim Randall is framed by two of his paintings of fire

Jim Randall

Randall’s images are far more abstract, but they too start with photographs.  He pointed to a large canvas covered in hues of red and orange.  Initially, he said, he saw a newspaper photograph of a fire.  He magnified a section of the photograph until he had eliminated all that surrounded the flames, so that he could concentrate on the interior of the fire itself.  And that, in abstract, was what he painted.

“Before, I was making things that were much more recognizable – the same material, the same source material, but I wasn’t happy with it,” he said. “So I decided to zoom in as if it were a movie and get more atmosphere into the painting.”  He also gets more “physically active” in executing the painting, using a string dipped in paint and then flogging the color onto the painting.  He supplements this technique with brush strokes.  He said he utilizes some very expensive materials, such as linen instead of canvas, rabbit skin glue/ resin,  and a particular line of paints from Germany.

Randall zooms in like a movie to find the desired image; Nemour blurs movie images;  and Mosley sequences his paintings as you might see them on a strip of movie film.  The influence of cinema—and the  love for the medium taught by Farber--is manifest. 

-DHH-

Triple Coincidence: Thanksgiving , Chanukah and Comet ISON perihelion

Professor Ross Cohen

As if Thanksgiving and the first day of Chanukah falling on the same day were not coincidence enough, the comet ISON will be at its closest point to the sun—about 750,000 miles away-- on that day, Thursday, Nov. 28th.

Grossmont College Astronomy Prof. Ross Cohen says for people who don’t have the proper equipment for comet watching,  at the time of its closest approach to the sun, it is safest to turn to the Internet or to television to view images from satellites that will be tracking the comet from various vantage points in space.

At its closest point to the sun, called the perihelion, Comet ISON skims past the sun– as viewed from Earth.  But various satellites have other vantage points and might even see it cross in front of the sun.
If Comet ISON survives the transit, it is expected to display a bright trail of rock, ice and other space materials gathered from its origin in the mammoth Oort Cloud, a vast expanse of comets surrounding our solar system.  Cohen suggests that pre-dawn in the first several days of December may be the safest time to see the comet because viewers won’t have to contend with the sun’s glare.

Comet ISON is named for the International Scientific Optical Network, under whose auspices two Russian scientists -- Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok—spotted the comet at a distance of 6 A U on September 21, 2012.  An A U is the distance between the Earth and the Sun, approximately 93 million miles.

In that it was visible by telescope more than a year before it would reach perihelion prompted a lot of speculation among astronomers that the Comet ISON might be among the brightest ever observed, Cohen said.  But further analysis of its narrow elliptical orbit helped pinpoint its origin to the Oort Cloud, which is up to 50,000 times farther from the Sun than is the Earth.

In that ISON comes from the Oort Cloud, rather than from the closer Kuiper Belt, it can be reasoned that it has been traveling hundreds of thousands of years in its first trip to our solar system since some unknown event occurred to knock it out of its previous orbit.  “It either had a collision with some other Oort Cloud object or possibly  the gravity of a passing star could have perturbed its orbit and sent it on one heading for the sun,” Cohen said.

Unlike comets that have gone around the sun before and have survived the trip, Comet ISON faces a more uncertain future as it approaches and reaches perihelion, Cohen said.  “It could disintegrate and when it comes around we could see nothing, or the ice could be greatly energized by the sun.  All comets leave some sort of trail of dust and water vapor and the more this material spreads out, the more extravagant that is going to be – unless it gets too hot, and then it would go bust.”

Cohen says the convergence of the American Thanksgiving holiday, the Jewish Chanukah holiday, and ISON perihelion is a remarkable triple coincidence—but that is all it is, a coincidence.

Thanksgiving is celebrated on a solar calendar.  Chanukah is celebrated on a lunar calendar, to which a full month is added in certain years to stay synchronized with the solar calendar.  Comets can travel for hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years, he said.
-DHH-

Over 240 high school students attend Day of Dance at Grossmont College

High school students practice dance moves at Grossmont College (Photo: Stephen Harvey)

EL CAJON – With California’s cash-starved K-12  public schools often feeling forced to deemphasize the arts in order to provide education in traditional academic subjects, East County high schools in cooperation with Grossmont College have an encouraging message for students with aspirations toward careers in the performing and visual arts.  There’s light --and movement--at the end of the tunnel!

More than 260 students from eight East County high schools recently attended technique classes and performances put on by Grossmont College’s Dance Department to familiarize themselves with the wide range of opportunities for aspiring dancers.

Prof. Kathy Meyer said that the high school students were treated on Friday, Nov. 15, to an abbreviated performance of “Breaking Boundaries,” the dance concert that Grossmont College presented in three performances last week at the Joan B. Kroc Theatre in San Diego.

In addition, high school students from Valhalla, Grossmont, Monte Vista, San Pasqual, Ramona, El Capitan, Helix Charter, and San Diego SCPA got to try their feet in a variety of dances demonstrated by Grossmont faculty.

David Mullen instructed the Jazz, Partnering, and Contact Improvisation classes, Kathy Meyer taught the Pilates mat classes, Melissa Adao instructed the Hip Hop classes as well as a Horton style Modern Dance class, Debi Toth-Ward instructed a Modern Dance class in the Taylor technique, Nancy Boskin-Mullen taught sections of both Salsa and Swing dance, and Colleen Shipkowski instructed the Ballet classes.

Meyer said over the years the day of dance has proven popular with serious young dancers.  “We often hear from students that their visit to Grossmont College for the High School Dance Day was the deciding factor in attending Grossmont College after their high school graduation,” she said. 

“It is an exciting event for the high school students, the Grossmont College dance instructors, and the high school dance educators and allows for a dialog that would not be possible without the one-on-one connection created during this annual event.”

-DHH-

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Editors: An interesting discussion on the status of the arts in K-12 schools may be found at http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2013/05/31/are-the-arts-dead-in-californias-public-schools/ideas/up-for-discussion/

Story of a cancer cell told by Grossmont College professor

Prof. Allison Shearer

                                                        
EL CAJON—Way down in a human body, deep inside a molecule, a cell was in the process of dividing itself.  But instead of the daughter cell being an exact replica of the mother cell, it had developed a little flaw—a mutation. 

Sometimes when this happens, other cells in the affected area of the body sense there is a problem, Prof. Allison Shearer said in a lecture dealing with biological issues touched upon in Pulitzer Prize winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.  Mukherjee’s book is currently the subject of a “One Campus, One Book” interdisciplinary study at Grossmont College.

Shearer said the nearby cells in such cases will communicate a signal to the new cell that for the good of the body, it ought to “commit suicide” in a process scientists call “apoptosis.”

The professor urged an audience of over 100 students on Nov. 14 to all wiggle their fingers, and to raise their hands if they found their fingers were webbed together.  No hands were raised.   This, lectured Shearer, was because the process of apoptosis had worked while they were still developing as fetuses.  As they developed, they had webbing between their fingers. Fortunately, the cells within the webbing extinguished themselves, freeing the fingers for human movement.

Apoptosis normally is an excellent defense mechanism but cancer cells have learned how to ignore the body’s signals, Shearer told students who had packed the Griffin Gate lecture hall.  When figuratively told by the other cells “go kill yourself,”  a precancerous or cancerous cell will respond, in effect, “uh-uh, nope, I’m going to stick around and make your life miserable,” Shearer said. Furthermore, Shearer imagined the cancer cell saying, “I’m going to keep going through my cell cycle and outgrow myself, and while I’m at it, I’m going to get blood vessels to grow in me, so I can take the nutrients that the rest of you need, and I’m going to spread my cancer elsewhere.”

The biology professor told the students that when cancer cells eventually multiply sufficiently to create a cancerous mass, “they are really good at tricking blood vessels to move into the tumors.”

If someone is having a biopsy done, and if the tumor has a lot of blood vessels, “that is a sure fire way to know that you are dealing with a cancerous mass in the body,” Shearer said.

The professor said normal cells rest when they have replicated a sufficient number of times to replace needed material such as the skin that grows back over a cut on someone’s finger.  In contrast, cancer cells will keep growing and growing, and each generation of growth comes a little faster and is “a little sloppier.”

By that, Shearer said she meant that the cancer cells will not exactly replicate themselves, but will continue to mutate, making it very difficult to find a treatment that will work on them.  “What is happening as you are trying to fight the cancer, the cancer is trying to stay a step ahead of you with mutations,” she said.

Her lecture explaining the fundamentals of cancer biology was the second in a six-part series that will be given over the Fall and Spring semesters in a program overseen by English Prof. Tate Hurvitz. 

“Through our One Book, One Campus program we are helping students see connections between subjects they might have previously thought unrelated or to see one complex issue from a variety of perspectives,” commented Grossmont College President Sunita V. Cooke. “All of these things are important to training the next generation of entrepreneurs and workers.  They are going to work in an ever-changing world with complex issues that will need this kind of critical thinking and an understanding of different perspectives.”

Another lecture by Humanities Prof. Pete Schmidt will focus on the way visual images influenced attitudes toward cigarette smoking in the 20th century.

--DHH--

Assemblywoman Weber: ‘Diversity’ means opportunity for all viewpoints

Assemblywoman Shirley Weber at Grossmont College

Simply putting people with differences in background at the same table does not assure that a workplace will have the benefits of diversity, Assemblywoman Shirley N. Weber (D-79) recently told students and faculty in a crowded Grossmont College lecture hall. “All the people around the table must feel empowered to speak up and advocate for their points of view,” she explained.

Assemblymember Weber, whose  Nov. 7 appearance was sponsored by the College’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, was a featured speaker during its Political Economy Week  which included 30 lectures delivered by faculty and visitors on a broad array of political and economic topics.

Being African-American, female, and from an economically disadvantaged family, the Assemblymember said that she has been able to bring a different perspective to decision making by elected officials.  Assemblymember Weber is a former board member of the San Diego Unified School District and currently serves as a member of the California State Assembly representing District 79.

The Assemblywoman recounted a time when she was on the school board for the San Diego Unified School District, and the district’s legislative advocate in Sacramento needed to be replaced.  The administration brought before the board a young white male with no previous experience as a lobbyist, whom they said could learn the job quickly.  Well, “what about the woman who had served as the previous lobbyist’s deputy?” Assemblymember Weber asked. 

She said the administrators responded by saying that they didn’t believe the woman was interested in the job because of family obligations.  Assemblymember Weber insisted that the deputy be asked anyway, and it turned out she was interested indeed.  Because the Assemblymember felt empowered to speak up, she was able to ensure that the woman was considered.  Having the requisite experience, and the interpersonal skills, the woman ultimately was appointed.
African-American women have been “forever training our supervisors,” said Assemblymember Weber, but because she was able to share her different perspective, the school board was able to avoid a tremendous error.

As an Assemblymember, Dr. Weber likewise brings new perspective both to legislation and to cultural events.  On one occasion, Assemblymember Weber sponsored a performance of the South African Kliptown boot dancers on the Assembly floor. This renowned dance troupe of youth was touring the United States.  The boot dancers reside in a shanty town in South Africa, called Kliptown. The dancers are participants of the Kliptown Youth Program, which was founded in 2007 in Johannesburg, South Africa to eradicate the poverty of mind, body, and soul.  The program, which has a membership of 400 children, provides educational support and after school activities that focus on tutoring, athletics and the performance arts, including the traditional South African Gumboot Dance. Gumboot Dance originated in the African mines of Capetown. The miners were not allowed to talk with one another, so they developed a system where they would hit their boots. This soon became more than just a communication system as they started to incorporate dance and step into it. In fact, this form of dance is mimicked today by many sororities and fraternities throughout the country.

 “We’ve never seen anything like this before,” she said other legislators exclaimed after the performance.”   “That’s because you never had an African-American woman legislator from San Diego , she responded.

Assemblymember Weber told the students of Grossmont Community College that they should not feel self-conscious if other students say things like, “Oh she is always talking black” or always talking about the rights of women, or about LGBT issues.  “The question isn’t how often I bring it up.  The question is ‘Am I right?’”

Although she disagrees with people who saw the election of Barack Obama as meaning that America is past racism, she said the election of an African-American to the highest office in the land does indicate that the United States is on the verge of greatness.  She said there are still setbacks, such as the shooting last year of Trayvon Martin by a Neighborhood Watch coordinator in Sanford, Florida, but added that California and the nation have made many strides toward enabling people of all different backgrounds to have influence in the making of public policy.

Asked what prompted Weber’s passion, the legislator responded that she had been a “radical” all her life, always looking at things a little differently.  What really was formative, however, was the support and encouragement from other African-Americans whose example she wants to emulate.

Driving to UCLA via the Santa Monica Freeway, she said, she would navigate her way through nice neighborhoods in which African-American women would be walking up the hills to clean someone else’s house.  Sometimes, she would stop and give them a lift.  “Girl, you get yourself an education,” they told her.

In her own neighborhood was a woman who perhaps had an income of only $100 per month, yet every month that woman would give Assemblymember Weber $5 “to help me stay in school.”  “I was fortunate in always having a group who believed in me,” she stated. 

With their support, Assemblymember Weber earned a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and a doctorate by the time she was 26.  And even earlier, she was teaching African Studies in the State University system.  In 1972, she said, every student who took her class was an African-American.  In 2008, about half the students were African-American, and the other half were members of other racial groups.   That, she said, is progress.

-DHH-

Octogenarian employee remembers World War II service

Bob Yochum at Grossmont College

EL CAJON – The only employee on the Grossmont campus who can remember military service during World War II is Bob Yochum, a graphic artist, who at age 86 still works two days a week

He enlisted in the military at age 17, and World War II was almost over by the time he left the United States for the Pacific Theatre. His transport stopped at a few islands in the Pacific before the war ended, and he never had to face combat—later wondering if he had been extraordinarily lucky or if he had missed out on something so many of his generation had experienced.

Yochum spent two years in the occupation forces in Japan, first working in maintenance, and later, in furtherance of his childhood dream to be an artist, "finagling a job as a photographer and cartoonist” for the 24^th Infantry Division newspaper. For most of the time, Yochum was stationed in Kokura on the southern island of Kyushu.

There was a rule that American GIs were not to travel alone in a country that so recently had been the enemy homeland, so when Yochum went to the offices of a Japanese newspaper in the evening, where the infantry division’s newspaper was printed, two soldiers would take him there in a jeep, then drop him off.  Then they would travel in a required pairing back to the base, leaving Yochum all night with Japanese civilians who worked at the newspaper. “There was never any danger,” recalled Yochum. “They were very friendly.”

What danger Yochum did experience came when he and members of his unit were off duty.  “One time, we went into a bunker to explore, and we looked up and the ceiling was covered with scorpions,” he recalled. “We all turned around and walked out – we didn’t want any to drop on us.”

On another occasion, he and friends decided to explore a nearby cave.  “We found an unexploded bomb lying there,” he said.

Having served in the military taught him a lot of discipline, Yochum said.  “It was a growing experience, more than anything else.”

After the war, he attended the Art Institute of Buffalo on the GI Bill and in 1950 went to work in the advertising department of J.W. Clement, Inc., a large printing company that had plants in Buffalo and on the West Coast. “Art work was done by hand without the aid of computers back then,” he said.  He worked at a drawing board and also as the company photographer.

Yochum said he did a lot of industrial photography and once walked the beams high in the air on a new plant the company was building.  “I felt like an iron worker carrying a camera.” 

In the 1970s he was transferred to the composing room to train fellow workers in new typesetting procedures. He joined the union and was elected to the board of the local.  “Being on the board was a growth experience, frightening at first, but it gave me the confidence to take a job managing apartments in Mira Mesa after I came to California.”

In 1977, Bob Yochum came to San Diego as a tourist.  A year later, he decided to move to California with his 16 year-old-son. Soon after he started working at Grossmont College part-time as a temporary employee. It was twenty years later when he obtained a permanent position.  “I’m stubborn, huh?” he laughs.

Yochum was 51 when he began working in the art department, now known as Creative Services, at Grossmont College. He is still going strong today working two days a week with some colleagues who date back with him to 35 years ago.  On November 1, they celebrated his 86^th birthday at lunch.

Others think of retirement at a much lesser age, but Yochum says “this is what I do and it keeps me going. I want to come up with new and creative solutions in my work. And we can all use a little extra money to enhance our life style.”

The oldest employee on Grossmont College’s payroll, he kids that he hopes to be able to work until he is 100. He enjoys his work and the camaraderie of his fellow employees and “all the hugs I get from the women.”

Recently he has worked on a number of pieces for the November “Breaking Boundaries" dance concert and helped design the cover and divider pages for a book produced by Grossmont College as part of its Accreditation process. He has also created badge designs for Grossmont College’s Academy of Justice.

On days off he frequently goes to lunch with friends, whom he describes as “a bunch of old fogies.” He also spends “too much time” on his computer designing off-the-wall birthday cards for family and friends. He also designs his own Christmas cards and has finished and printed this year’s cards already.

Yochum is a widower with a stepdaughter and three surviving sons, ten grandchildren and seven great grandchildren divided between the East Coast of the United States and  Ontario, Canada. His oldest son is a computer programmer for a bank. His middle son put 20 years in the U.S. Coast Guard and now works for Homeland Security. His youngest has his own accounting business and does some property management.

Yochum lives in The San Carlos area of San Diego. It is a short commute to work and easy to get to shopping areas, eateries, hospitals and doctors.

Over 50 years ago he came across a book on origami, the art of paper folding, written by the father of a co-worker. That was a start. He now enjoys folding various birds, animals and other objects to give to friends and others. He sometimes tells people his goal is to give every woman in San Diego County an origami bird or animal.

He says “the best camera is the one you have with you” as he pulled a small Leica camera from a case on his belt. “A camera is of no use if you don’t have it with you.”

How long will he continue to work?  “When the Man Upstairs tells me it’s time,” he declares.

-DHH-