an invitation to remember
What follows is the contribution I made to principal Derek Pope's compilation of memories of the history and experience that was Bath Academy of Art. Since rereading what I wrote over twenty five years ago, I have made a few minor grammatical changes to the published text.
CORSHAM – THE SHORTHAND MNEMONIC FOR ART
Even though I am three thousand miles and thirty years from Corsham, not a day goes by in my working life when I am not reminded of those three significant years.
Now were this the first sentence of a novel, one might be forgiven for suspecting that a mystery was about to unfold. In my case, it is definitely no mystery, but one could be forgiven for mistaking it for a haunting. ‘Corsham’, has become the shorthand mnemonic for art, for education, for mentors, for friends, for meals at the Court, for pubs, for the Ellises and, of course, for my life's partner Gillian Clarke
Like so many others I suspect, my Corsham experience began years before being accepted to the college. Terrence Eugene Burns (a Corsham graduate) was my high school art teacher and, even though I had no way of knowing it at the time, from the first moment I entered his art room I was hooked. Five years later, much less when I realized that resistance was futile, my sights were set firmly on the west-country. I applied and, had I not been accepted … well, it doesn’t bear thinking about!
From the vantage point of 1995, I should acknowledge that much of the three Corsham years is a blur that is only partially attributable to my introduction to the many pubs that comprised the routine of Beechfield to the Court and back. Mostly, it is attributable to the passage of time after which just highlights remain.
There was that first hour when a second-year student offered me a ride to supper in his bubble car and I made an unfortunate assumption when admiring his shirt. Presuming that he had bought it in that particular colour combination, I asked where he got it and was informed that being an art student means that ‘you do this kind of thing for yourself’; then the first day when, as impromptu spokesman for the group in which I had been placed, I made the mistake of telling Rosemary that I had not come to Corsham to study photography; and then there was that first meeting with Clifford in a social setting when he scared the life out of me by asking that I tell him ‘something amusing’.
I often wonder whatever happened to the Mikes, Penny and Ounstead who, one Sunday morning, were engaged in a competitive but elegant display of gymnastics, diving over such things as a concrete sculpture plinth on the Beechfield lawn? I believe we were on our way to lunch. Suddenly, half a dozen geese hove into view and immediately assumed the role of the next gymnastic challenge. Both artists sprang above the flock only to forward-roll into eye contact with the Ellises who must have been doing a little early morning gardening or fowl feeding. That was something special that Clifford and Rosemary seemed to possess, the totally unpredictable ability to appear at what felt like the least convenient moment. For example, from where did Rosemary spring when, with Gill sitting on my lap, I was told to get away from that girl as I had a cold and she was on teaching practice? Thank God that we became and still are married or I may never have survived the implications of that moment.
What I really took away from Corsham, apart that is from exposure to the best of artistic processes and practices, was an inability to make do when it comes to something like preparing for an open house. How well I remember those poor lads at the first school I taught in (a position that Rosemary was instrumental in finding for me) who helped mop the floor at two in the morning as we backed through the art room doorway leaving behind the ‘best exhibit they ever had at the school’. Then there was the photography question. Having been ‘persuaded’ by Rosemary that to know this medium was to be on the cutting edge of art education, I must confess that I have made good use of the knowledge and have introduced photography into every curriculum for which I have had responsibility.
In closing, I want to relate three short stories which demonstrate how global is the influence of Corsham and also just how remarkable is the capacity of its graduates to encounter one another in both professional and personal lives.
Our daughter was attending McGill University in Montreal and was anxious for Gill and I to meet a friend that she had just met. The young woman was from Pakistan, although her immediate family was living in Oshawa, Ontario. After a few minutes of general conversation, I asked whether she corresponded with anyone in Pakistan because, about the time of the India-Pakistan war, I had lost contact with a Corsham friend. Salima Faiz. To our surprise, it turned out that Salima and her husband were good friends of the family. Our daughter’s friend went to her own apartment and returned with photographs of Salima and her family and, better yet, a current address. I wrote, receiving a charming reply from Salima that included news of another friend and Corsham graduate, Paul Sproll. He had been a candidate for a teaching position at Rhode Island School of Design when Salima, a graduate student at the time, was a student representative on the hiring committee. Paul was hired and, happily, was still there when I telephoned.
In 1990, when on sabbatical leave and visiting colleges in England, Gill and I ‘rediscovered’ Derek and Margaret Pope and, from them, found the address of Terry and Pat Burns. Visiting Terry and Pat, we discovered that my old art teacher had become an expert genealogist and, wouldn’t you know, the other purpose of our trip included attention to our own, stalled family research. I became the student all over again! Forty-six years old and back in grammar school! But how could it be better, a Corsham-trained genealogist: curious, discriminating, thorough and able to suppress the urge to creativity in matters-genealogical … and still a great teacher to boot?
Finally, back in England again in 1995 and on another sabbatical round of fact-finding, I was meeting with a county supervisor who, after we had gone over the materials that I needed to know about said, ‘you trained at Corsham didn’t you’? He went on to offer that, as education in the UK has been recovering from Mrs. Thatcher’s innovations, university art-education departments appeared to be turning to a model that looks remarkably like the Ellis vision. I think he may have offered a couple of examples but it was lost in the mists of ‘of course, it had to be that way’.
Could it be that, after all, the world really is flat with a small retaining-wall running around its perimeter? Perhaps it's the wall that Clifford had moved a foot to the right as a summer work project for students, the ripples from which run to the four corners eventually returning to the source.
I don’t know about you but, as a model of personal and professional epistemology, the Corsham experience has worked for me.
The cast of characters:
Derek Pope - education professor and, with his wife Margaret, warden of the women's hostel.
Gillian Clarke - arrived a year after me, graduated in 1966 and became Gillian Maycock on July 30 1966.
Rosemary - Rosemary Ellis, wife of the principal and head of the photo & film department.
Clifford - Clifford Ellis, founding president of Bath Academy of Art
Mike Penny & Mike Ounstead - student peers. Sadly, I understand that Mike Penny passed away.
Salima (Faiz) Hashmi - a comrade in the photo group who went on to be an important player in art and education in Pakistan
Paul Sproll - in Gill's year. He became a good friend. Professor at Rhode Island School of Design since 1990.
Terry & Pat Burns - both Corsham grads, Terry was my high-school art teacher, my mentor and my friend.
Now were this the first sentence of a novel, one might be forgiven for suspecting that a mystery was about to unfold. In my case, it is definitely no mystery, but one could be forgiven for mistaking it for a haunting. ‘Corsham’, has become the shorthand mnemonic for art, for education, for mentors, for friends, for meals at the Court, for pubs, for the Ellises and, of course, for my life's partner Gillian Clarke
Like so many others I suspect, my Corsham experience began years before being accepted to the college. Terrence Eugene Burns (a Corsham graduate) was my high school art teacher and, even though I had no way of knowing it at the time, from the first moment I entered his art room I was hooked. Five years later, much less when I realized that resistance was futile, my sights were set firmly on the west-country. I applied and, had I not been accepted … well, it doesn’t bear thinking about!
From the vantage point of 1995, I should acknowledge that much of the three Corsham years is a blur that is only partially attributable to my introduction to the many pubs that comprised the routine of Beechfield to the Court and back. Mostly, it is attributable to the passage of time after which just highlights remain.
There was that first hour when a second-year student offered me a ride to supper in his bubble car and I made an unfortunate assumption when admiring his shirt. Presuming that he had bought it in that particular colour combination, I asked where he got it and was informed that being an art student means that ‘you do this kind of thing for yourself’; then the first day when, as impromptu spokesman for the group in which I had been placed, I made the mistake of telling Rosemary that I had not come to Corsham to study photography; and then there was that first meeting with Clifford in a social setting when he scared the life out of me by asking that I tell him ‘something amusing’.
I often wonder whatever happened to the Mikes, Penny and Ounstead who, one Sunday morning, were engaged in a competitive but elegant display of gymnastics, diving over such things as a concrete sculpture plinth on the Beechfield lawn? I believe we were on our way to lunch. Suddenly, half a dozen geese hove into view and immediately assumed the role of the next gymnastic challenge. Both artists sprang above the flock only to forward-roll into eye contact with the Ellises who must have been doing a little early morning gardening or fowl feeding. That was something special that Clifford and Rosemary seemed to possess, the totally unpredictable ability to appear at what felt like the least convenient moment. For example, from where did Rosemary spring when, with Gill sitting on my lap, I was told to get away from that girl as I had a cold and she was on teaching practice? Thank God that we became and still are married or I may never have survived the implications of that moment.
What I really took away from Corsham, apart that is from exposure to the best of artistic processes and practices, was an inability to make do when it comes to something like preparing for an open house. How well I remember those poor lads at the first school I taught in (a position that Rosemary was instrumental in finding for me) who helped mop the floor at two in the morning as we backed through the art room doorway leaving behind the ‘best exhibit they ever had at the school’. Then there was the photography question. Having been ‘persuaded’ by Rosemary that to know this medium was to be on the cutting edge of art education, I must confess that I have made good use of the knowledge and have introduced photography into every curriculum for which I have had responsibility.
In closing, I want to relate three short stories which demonstrate how global is the influence of Corsham and also just how remarkable is the capacity of its graduates to encounter one another in both professional and personal lives.
Our daughter was attending McGill University in Montreal and was anxious for Gill and I to meet a friend that she had just met. The young woman was from Pakistan, although her immediate family was living in Oshawa, Ontario. After a few minutes of general conversation, I asked whether she corresponded with anyone in Pakistan because, about the time of the India-Pakistan war, I had lost contact with a Corsham friend. Salima Faiz. To our surprise, it turned out that Salima and her husband were good friends of the family. Our daughter’s friend went to her own apartment and returned with photographs of Salima and her family and, better yet, a current address. I wrote, receiving a charming reply from Salima that included news of another friend and Corsham graduate, Paul Sproll. He had been a candidate for a teaching position at Rhode Island School of Design when Salima, a graduate student at the time, was a student representative on the hiring committee. Paul was hired and, happily, was still there when I telephoned.
In 1990, when on sabbatical leave and visiting colleges in England, Gill and I ‘rediscovered’ Derek and Margaret Pope and, from them, found the address of Terry and Pat Burns. Visiting Terry and Pat, we discovered that my old art teacher had become an expert genealogist and, wouldn’t you know, the other purpose of our trip included attention to our own, stalled family research. I became the student all over again! Forty-six years old and back in grammar school! But how could it be better, a Corsham-trained genealogist: curious, discriminating, thorough and able to suppress the urge to creativity in matters-genealogical … and still a great teacher to boot?
Finally, back in England again in 1995 and on another sabbatical round of fact-finding, I was meeting with a county supervisor who, after we had gone over the materials that I needed to know about said, ‘you trained at Corsham didn’t you’? He went on to offer that, as education in the UK has been recovering from Mrs. Thatcher’s innovations, university art-education departments appeared to be turning to a model that looks remarkably like the Ellis vision. I think he may have offered a couple of examples but it was lost in the mists of ‘of course, it had to be that way’.
Could it be that, after all, the world really is flat with a small retaining-wall running around its perimeter? Perhaps it's the wall that Clifford had moved a foot to the right as a summer work project for students, the ripples from which run to the four corners eventually returning to the source.
I don’t know about you but, as a model of personal and professional epistemology, the Corsham experience has worked for me.
The cast of characters:
Derek Pope - education professor and, with his wife Margaret, warden of the women's hostel.
Gillian Clarke - arrived a year after me, graduated in 1966 and became Gillian Maycock on July 30 1966.
Rosemary - Rosemary Ellis, wife of the principal and head of the photo & film department.
Clifford - Clifford Ellis, founding president of Bath Academy of Art
Mike Penny & Mike Ounstead - student peers. Sadly, I understand that Mike Penny passed away.
Salima (Faiz) Hashmi - a comrade in the photo group who went on to be an important player in art and education in Pakistan
Paul Sproll - in Gill's year. He became a good friend. Professor at Rhode Island School of Design since 1990.
Terry & Pat Burns - both Corsham grads, Terry was my high-school art teacher, my mentor and my friend.
Bryan Maycock 1995
A Celebration of Bath Academy of Art at Corsham. Edited by Derek Pope 1997 pp 69-70
last edited: July 2020
A Celebration of Bath Academy of Art at Corsham. Edited by Derek Pope 1997 pp 69-70
last edited: July 2020
