I started teaching in the fall of 1968—my first and only year at the University of St. Thomas—an astonishing year in many ways. First of all, we were able to buy whatever equipment we wanted; there was no budget to teach; I could do whatever I wanted in the way of setting up courses; and we could take students from the greater community. They didn’t even have to be full-time or even part-time students of the University. It was just this great potpourri of people from all over the community of virtually ages from high schoolers up. Then I was told it would be a good idea to have a guest artist program in the second semester, and that the Museum of Modern Art was ready and willing to loan us a show if I could simply identify what we would like to have come to campus. I mean, [I was] one year out of graduate school! The most important and the most interesting range of people you could have come up with at that time came—and they spoke and/or showed their work. They critiqued my students’ work. It was quite a way to start a first year of instruction.
Wrestling
Back to rice
In the early spring of 1969, Jerry O’Grady came to me and said, “We’re all moving to Rice.” I said, “Who are we?” He said James Blue, who had started teaching film, the whole art history faculty there, Bill Camfield, Walter Widrig, Mino Badner, Philip Oliver Smith, the slide librarian, Pat Tooney…and the question was, “Would you like to go, too?” It’s not that they could guarantee that I would go, but the first question was, “Would you like to?” And then I don’t know whose muster I had to pass, but I did so—and by the end of the ’68-’69 academic year we were on the way to Rice. The media center started construction in the fall of 1969, and the Institute of the Arts opened seemingly overnight. In the late spring and summer of 1969 all of the sudden Dominique was having shows, and then we were like six months behind that.
Being next door to that operation was a thousand times more important than being on the Rice campus because the media center from the time of its arrival on the Rice campus was regarded with some misgivings of “What is this all about?” I mean, there was very little art here beforehand. John O’Neill had started the department of Fine Arts and David Parsons was teaching some sculpture and John O’Neill was teaching some painting—but the students were not really coming to Rice expecting to take art courses. But boy, did they line up for the film and photography courses. From Day One we had more students than we could take. We were on the early wave of the arrival of photography in the universities across the country as a viable and important visual art form. Students were ready for it. It was beginning to happen. The Museum of Fine Arts was beginning to have photo shows. St. Thomas and now Rice were beginning to teach photography. But we really were one of the first waves.
We actually taught Rice courses in the fall of ’69 at the University of St. Thomas. We had a little building on Mt. Vernon Street, and that building which we had converted to darkrooms and studio and classroom was still operational. I taught Rice-sponsored courses, part of the department of Fine Arts at Rice University chaired by John O’Neill, in that same location in the fall of ’69. In the spring of 1970, we moved into this building which was then and is still today as far as I’m concerned the best working/teaching facility in film and photography I’ve seen anywhere…just a dream of a space. Eugene Aubry designed it with James Blue and me working with him on the specs. So wow—what a first two years! Really interesting, you know. All of a sudden I was out of graduate school and now not working towards a thesis or any course requirement. I was a working artist.