0.34 Earl staley, b. 1938

Preparation

I knew I was artistically inclined because Mother kept pushing me in that direction. I knew I couldn’t do sports because of my eyes. So I was into Boy Scouts and Indian lore as a boy in Chicago. Then I got to college in Bloomington, Illinois—Illinois Wesleyan. And I saw some people who looked like they were rather interesting and said, “Who are they?” And somebody said, “Well, they’re the art students.” I went over there. I said, “I’m not going to be a businessman. I’m sorry, Dad, I can’t do this. I cannot take over your business.” So I became an artist.

My teachers in school simply said, “There’s a painting. There’s your canvas. Paint on it.” Or, “There’s somebody to draw. Draw.” I recall no teaching of anything but attitude. We were all abstract expressionists and such. But in terms of teaching rules and how to do it, nobody taught me anything. I had to teach myself a long time later.

For my graduate degree, I applied and ended up going to the University of Arkansas, which had an allegedly progressive art program. But I felt really isolated being in Fayetteville. Most of these people had never been to a museum. Luckily, from there I got a job in St. Louis at Washington University, which was a three-year appointment. It got me started; it got me back into a big city which had a great museum. I had my first show there in a gallery, and this was nice. Then they let me go and I got to Rice.

New in town

I got to Houston in 1966 with a job at Rice University, in the beginning stages of Rice’s art program. John O’Neill hired me to teach primarily printmaking and then drawing to architecture students. I was fortunate enough to get here in ’66, which seemed like the very beginning of the art world here although it wasn’t, really—there wasn’t that many of us here, and I was the youngest one. So I was at Rice for three years until the de Menils moved in.

Rice didn’t like me because I was too outrageous for them. I was told that if you get out of line at Rice you will not last long, and I offended them. I was a young man. I was arrogant. I really pissed them off. John O’Neill had the great ability to hire people that he immediately didn’t like. He didn’t like me right away, and he didn’t like [Bob] Camblin and after that, Joe Tate. John—he was quite a character. He hired Joe Tate to replace me, and of course, Tate was worse than me.

Camblin was much more gregarious than me and we started hanging out and meeting more people. Man, we had a ball. And after all that, we kept working together, of course. And luckily I didn’t have to leave [Houston]. I moved from Rice to [University of]St. Thomas and built a studio program with Jack Boynton and Pat Colville beginning in 1969.

A welcoming place

Houston in the mid-1960s was welcoming. Really wonderful. I mean, the first night I was here I went to an art gallery—Kiko Gallery—and it was all these fancy people walking around. They were happy to see me. I came out of St. Louis which was just a really big city which had a lot of history behind it, and they really didn’t have anything to do with the arts. But here people were at least interested in it. They were supportive, although they didn’t buy much. It was a lot of fun. There were art galleries all over. David Gallery was in operation. Kiko. Louisiana Gallery was where I had my first show within a year or so. So there was a great interest and not many artists, just a sense of opportunity and interest in what we did.