Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Local notes
http://www.processwork.org/files/Finalprojects/Kavanaugh_K_2007.pdf
My college studies were in Fine Arts and Sociology at the University of Oregon, where I graduated with a B.S. in 1984. In the painting department, I loved the studio classes and would so enjoy the detailed study of still life, live model and landscape subjects - the way that I could merge with and explore what I was painting. My subjective and intuitive experience expressed in the painting became my expression of that subject. The head of the painting department changed, the previously neutral Frank Okada was gone, replaced with Ron Graff, a teacher focused on technique and method. Ron’s goal for his students was to achieve a realist product. He was very sharp with me and said: “If you want to do that touchy feely painting, move to California.” I felt pushed out rather that pushed towards something. I did not understand we were having a stylistic difference. He also had the judgment that I needed to paint seven hours a day to see if I could be any good at it, sell paintings and become “known”. I was working at a Special Education pre-school and doing a co-major in Sociology. His message was: Do it my way or give up. I left the painting department and found a teacher, George Kokis, who was interested in the creative process. George worked in clay, so I transferred to the ceramics program. He spoke about the creative daemon, mythology and the source of artistic inspiration. We studied the paintings of the bison found on a cave wall in France and energetic places like Stonehenge and Delphi. We dreamed back to the beginning of the human timeline and discovered the unknown mystery, the bringer of food, water, life and death. I felt creative impulse as an affirmation of life inspired as a call for blessings to sway the fates. Incorporating this depth of meaning gave purpose to the resulting expression. Art making arose from this creative sense of connection to the spirits behind and within what manifests.The roots of a collective myth gave rise to temples dedicated to these spirits. Out of frustration and lack of resolution with the art/painting department, I entered the counseling program at the University of Oregon. My focus stayed with the artistic process, bringing out and explicating the motivation and intention in other people’s expression. Much of this training was psycho-educational and involved helping people to change; to discover within them their motivations and providing more effective ways to express their concerns and achieve their goals. The mystery in the background still flirted with me as I watched children express complicated and unspoken dynamics within their families through their play and the emotive power in their drawings. There was no discussion at that time about the complications of a system that, for good reason, interrupted the lives of children and removed them from their homes. My position was to support families in the face of a foster care system that impacted the children as the legal system moved to terminate the parents’ rights, if that was their fate.
My college studies were in Fine Arts and Sociology at the University of Oregon, where I graduated with a B.S. in 1984. In the painting department, I loved the studio classes and would so enjoy the detailed study of still life, live model and landscape subjects - the way that I could merge with and explore what I was painting. My subjective and intuitive experience expressed in the painting became my expression of that subject. The head of the painting department changed, the previously neutral Frank Okada was gone, replaced with Ron Graff, a teacher focused on technique and method. Ron’s goal for his students was to achieve a realist product. He was very sharp with me and said: “If you want to do that touchy feely painting, move to California.” I felt pushed out rather that pushed towards something. I did not understand we were having a stylistic difference. He also had the judgment that I needed to paint seven hours a day to see if I could be any good at it, sell paintings and become “known”. I was working at a Special Education pre-school and doing a co-major in Sociology. His message was: Do it my way or give up. I left the painting department and found a teacher, George Kokis, who was interested in the creative process. George worked in clay, so I transferred to the ceramics program. He spoke about the creative daemon, mythology and the source of artistic inspiration. We studied the paintings of the bison found on a cave wall in France and energetic places like Stonehenge and Delphi. We dreamed back to the beginning of the human timeline and discovered the unknown mystery, the bringer of food, water, life and death. I felt creative impulse as an affirmation of life inspired as a call for blessings to sway the fates. Incorporating this depth of meaning gave purpose to the resulting expression. Art making arose from this creative sense of connection to the spirits behind and within what manifests.The roots of a collective myth gave rise to temples dedicated to these spirits. Out of frustration and lack of resolution with the art/painting department, I entered the counseling program at the University of Oregon. My focus stayed with the artistic process, bringing out and explicating the motivation and intention in other people’s expression. Much of this training was psycho-educational and involved helping people to change; to discover within them their motivations and providing more effective ways to express their concerns and achieve their goals. The mystery in the background still flirted with me as I watched children express complicated and unspoken dynamics within their families through their play and the emotive power in their drawings. There was no discussion at that time about the complications of a system that, for good reason, interrupted the lives of children and removed them from their homes. My position was to support families in the face of a foster care system that impacted the children as the legal system moved to terminate the parents’ rights, if that was their fate.