moving image of students and faculty on the farm truck at black mountain college

photograph by helen post, circa 1936-37. animation by brent brafford, NCSU libraries.

(Image from Helen P. Modley Collection, Black Mountain College Collection, Western Regional Archives, Asheville, North Carolina.)

ray trayer, animated

one of the great finds from last month's trip to the black mountain college collection in asheville, north carolina, was a series of photographs of ray trayer, the farmer at BMC from 1946 to 1951. this was a big deal. for over two years, i could not find a single photo of ray trayer on the farm.

trayer was a quaker, a pacifist, and a conscientious objector during world war two. in september 1946, he arrived to black mountain college where he joined friend and fellow quaker, clifford "cliff" moles, to run the farm. using methods of organic gardening and farming, trayer and moles focused on improving the soil and, in the process, greatly increased the farm's efficiency and productivity.

due to trayer's abrasive personality, moles left the college in 1948, the same year trayer developed a course called "soil and steel" which explored common difficulties facing US farmers and factory workers. finally, after a fifteen year search, BMC had a farmer who could both farm and teach.

 
felix krowinski was a student (and avid photographer) at black mountain college from 1947 to 1948 (and perhaps through 1949). his collection of photographs -- the "felix krowinski, sr. collection" in the "project papers" within the black mountain college collection -- includes dozens of photographs of everyday life at the college. the collection also includes a wonderful series of photographs of ray trayer working with student bernard carp.

using a basic animated gif tool called make a gif, i strung the images together creating, i believe, the first brief video - or mini-movie! - of everyday life at black mountain college.

my office walls: a (voluntary) mid-sabbatical progress report

i started my sabbatical in summer 2012 with a goal to research the history of the farm at black mountain college (1933 - 56). i began where BMC began, in north carolina, to attend and participate in the information professionals 2050 conference, organized by gary marchionini of the university of north carolina. i gave a talk, titled "digital natives on a media fast," which described a media fast i assigned (twice) to the students in my intro to media studies class. i also spoke briefly about green media and seasonal syllabi.

from chapel hill i drove west to asheville where, with support from USF's faculty development funds (FDF), i spent a week in the black mountain college collection, at the western regional archives. with help from archivist heather south, i became acquainted with the amazing and enormous collection and dug deeply into farm and food-related folders, documents, and photography. my work with (and love for) the bmc collection was featured in jon elliston's article "NC state archives opening its first western branch" in the carolina public press.

in july i began taping my research to the walls of my office. i started with a few photographs of students, faculty, and staff building a barn (in summer, 1941).

in august i flew to los angeles to spend a few days with the MC richards papers at the getty research institute. i learned more about MC's (BMC faculty, literature and drama, fall 1945 - summer 1951) proposed book on the history of black mountain college, located ray trayer's (BMC farmer, fall 1946 - summer 1951) 5-page syllabus "soil and steel," and discovered herb cable's (BMC student, still working on exact dates but sometime between 1945 - 1951) unpublished short story and poetry about the farm at black mountain college. by the end of summer, my office's east-facing wall, the one representing the farm at black mountain college in the 1940s, looked something like this:

in fall i returned to asheville, to attend and participate in the "re-viewing black mountain college 4: looking forward at buckminster fuller's legacy" conference and to conduct further archival research at the BMC collection. the conference, organized by the black mountain college museum + art center (BMCMAC) and hosted on the beautiful campus of the university of north carolina, asheville, brought together local, national, and international scholars and followers of black mountain college and (this year's conference focus) buckminster fuller (BMC summer faculty, 1948 and 1949). i gave a talk titled "the farm at black mountain college" which traced the development of the farm through the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. with help from archivist heather south, my talk featured a table of farm-related "live artifacts" from the western regional archives. before and after my talk, i invited attendees to approach the table and witness the artifacts first hand. "if you like them," i said, "you should check out the whole BMC collection at the western regional archives."

the conference ended with a field trip to the lake eden campus. at the end of the regularly scheduled tour, alice sebrell, program director of BMCMAC and our excellent tour guide, invited the field trippers to walk to the farm where i would give a brief history. sharing my knowledge about the farm at black mountain college while at the farm at black mountain college was a true sabbatical (and career) highlight.

after the conference, and with help from FDF, i spent a week at the BMC collection, working primarily with the ted and barbara dreier collection, faculty meeting minutes, and photography of the farm.

much of winter was spent growing and tending my personal research archive of the farm at black mountain college. through google, i located and began corresponding with former members of the BMC community, including ron robertson (BMC student, 1950 - 51) and trueman machenry (BMC student, 1949 - 1951; worked on farm 1951). through emails with katherine c. reynolds, author of visions and vanities: john andrew rice of black mountain college, i learned about the john andrew rice collection at the south caroliniana library and obtained recordings of 8 oral histories with former BMC students, faculty, and faculty family members. i also continued (and continue) to build "a bibliography of the farm at black mountain college," a real-time, photo-based bibliography of the campus farm that now contains over 100 photo-entries.

the walls of my office also grew. soon i had three walls representing three decades of the farm at black mountain college. taped on my office walls were farm and farmer photographs; farm plans, maps, and planting charts; faculty and student discussions about the farm; and paintings, poetry, short stories, and personal memoirs about the farm. by the end of winter, my office walls looked like this:

i am excited by and focused on my remaining sabbatical activities. in april i will return to north carolina, to raleigh, for a two-day visit to north carolina state university. here i will give a series of talks (and hopefully classroom visits) on social media, learning, and libraries as well as a talk about the farm at black mountain college. from raleigh i go to boone, to appalachian state university, where i will give a talk titled "the farm at black mountain college: a history in five acts with lessons for today"; the talk is co-sponsored by the sustainable development program and belk library and information commons. while at ASU i will visit the john a. rice papers in belk library.

depending on FDF support, i will then go to asheville, again to the BMC collection, with a focus on the black mountain college research project, the recently-catalogued helen post modley collection, and, if they are ready by then, mary emma harris' black mountain college project papers.

in may, again, depending on FDF support, i will fly to washington, dc, to colonial williamsburg, to conduct research in the a. lawrence kocher archive. kocher (BMC faculty, architecture 1940 - 43) worked with students, faculty, and staff on numerous construction projects including, most famously, the studies building (completed in 1941). kocher also designed and worked with students, faculty, and staff to build many of the farm structures on the lake eden campus, including the barn, a milking house, two corn silos, and a machinery shed/corn crib.

finally, in july, i will return again to north carolina, to chapel hill, where i will give the keynote talk at the triangle research libraries network annual meeting 2013. from chapel hill, i will drive to - where else? - asheville and conduct research at the BMC collection for as long as possible.

between all this travel i look forward to watching my office walls grow.

it's been an exciting and fulfilling first half+ of my sabbatical and i look forward to what remains.

bas allen

(part one of what i hope becomes a seven-part blog series titled "the farmers of black mountain college.")

The founding of Black Mountain College, in 1933, is a fascinating story - one of those Depression era, against all odds, they did it stories. Fortunately, we know much of it through three outstanding books: Martin Duberman's Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community (1972); Mary Emma Harris' The Arts at Black Mountain College (1987); and Katherine C. Reynolds' Visions and Vanities: John Andrew Rice of Black Mountain College (1998). For the sake of this post, I offer a brief history of the college's beginnings.

In April 1933, after a series of conflicts and disagreements, Hamilton Holt, president of Rollins College (in Winter Park, Florida), fired John Andrew Rice, (tenured) professor of classics and academic iconoclast. Rice appealed, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) was brought in, and by the end of May the AAUP ruled the reasons for Rice's dismissal unsatisfactory. In early June, Holt fired two more Rollins professors, Ralph Reed Lounsbury and Frederick Raymond Georgia, for their association with Rice. By the end of June, eight more faculty were fired, asked to resign, or resigned out of protest. Many students, including the student body president and the editor of the campus newspaper, withdrew from the college out of protest.

Rice, an academic visionary and friend and follower of John Dewey, had often thought about what an ideal college would look like and, with encouragement from some of the now-former Rollins students and faculty, he began thinking about how to make it happen. Two things were necessary: a campus and money (about $14,500). From a tip from Bob Wunsch, who taught drama at Rollins, Rice visited a collection of buildings owned by the Blue Ridge Assembly of the Protestant Church, located in the mountains in western North Carolina, eighteen miles east of Asheville. The ready-made campus, which included ample lodging for students and faculty, a dining room, and the iconic Lee Hall, was used as a resort-conference space during the summer but available for fall, winter, and spring. Rice loved it. Through hard work and good connections, especially on the part of former Rollins professor, Ted Dreier, and former Rollins student, Anne "Nan" Chapin, they raised enough money to launch the college.

By the time the twelve faculty and twenty-two students moved into the Blue Ridge Assembly, in mid-September 1933, Bascomb "Bas" Allen was already there. (Jack Lipsey, chef for Blue Ridge Assembly, was also already there.) Bas was what we now call "plant manager" for the Blue Ridge Assembly - he made sure everything worked and everyone was warm and dry. Bas was an expert plumber, electrician, steamfitter, carpenter, and auto mechanic. He was able, according to multiple personal memoirs of both students and faculty, to fix anything and everything. Bas Allen was, in the words of Jon Everts (BMC faculty, music, 1933-42), "our regular handyman-genius."

Bas was also the college's nature expert and he organized overnight hikes for the students. As Duberman notes, Bas "took students on camping trips into the mountains, familiarizing them with the paths, flowers, and wild life, and many grew to value his quiet, intuitive insights" (155). The mountain trips quickly became one of the highlights at the college among students. In a 1946 issue of the Black Mountain College Community Bulletin, a student remembers: "It would take too long to recall the many ways in which we knew and depended on Bas. But one of the pleasantest was on the mountain trips that we took. Often we went together over the Craggies, the Black Mountains, Mitchell, Yates' Knob, Blue Ridge, Pinnacle, Green Knob, and so forth."

But what really interests me about Bas Allen is this: for the first two years of Black Mountain College, Bas taught farming. In fall 1993, Norman "Norm" Weston (BMC student, 1933-1938) and a few other BMC students thought it would be a good idea to start a campus farm. Inspired in part by Ralph Borsodi's 1933 back-to-the-land classic Flight from the City: An Experiment in Creative Living on the Land and encouraged by now-BMC professor Dreier, Norm and his crew proposed the idea to members of the college council, who approved the plan as long as the students took charge of the project. The students' collective knowledge of farming was healthy but limited. So when the students needed help running the farm, they went to Bas. As a student wrote in the Black Mountain College Community Bulletin, Bas "showed us how to farm: how to plow and how to harvest and everything in between" (3). Allan Sly (BMC faculty, music, 1935-1938) recalled that Bas "initiated us into what to do for harvesting corn, how to raise pigs, how to cut down trees, and things of that kind" (12).

There's a lot more to research and write about Bas Allen, including the apple orchards he rented (first from the Blue Ridge Assembly, then from Black Mountain College) and used to teach students how to prune fruit trees and how to make fresh apple cider. But for now, I'm confident to call Bas Allen Black Mountain College's first farmer.

Although my main interest in Bas is with his role in the farm, I am struck by how many personal memoirs mention Bas as an integral and inspiring part of the Black Mountain College experience. Janet "Bingo" Aley (BMC student, 1944-46) lumps Bas together with some of BMC's most famous teachers including Josef Albers and M.C. Richards. Bingo recalled "quietly absorbing the teachings of Bob Wunsch, Dave Corkran (a wonderful teacher who spotted my uncertainties during study of "Documents in American History"), M. C. Richards, Albers (briefly), George Zabriskie (poet), Alfred Kazin … Jalo and Eddie Lowinsky (beautiful music), as well as Bas Allen, whom I adored and who taught me plumping" (150).

And then there's Gisela Kronenberg Herwitz (BMC student, dates unknown) who recalls: "The work program was an important and exciting part of my life at BMC … Eventually I was put in charge of the tool shed and later worked with Bas Allen, the general maintenance man and an excellent teacher, learning to steamfit the lodge and other existing buildings, wire them, put in street lights, etc. I learned to put in subflooring, to drive a nail straight, and to do some masonry work with field stones on the Study Building. These accomplishments gave me a lot of confidence and some useful skills that have lasted me a lifetime."

And finally there's Norm Weston (who will re-appear shortly in this seven-part blog series on the farmers at Black Mountain College) who writes of Bas: "Always pleasant, and willing to teach, he made the place run and kept us warm and dry" (3).

On August 24, 1946, while crossing the street in the nearby town of Black Mountain, Bas was struck by a car. Three days later, he died. Although the name Bas Allen is rarely mentioned in discussions about Black Mountain College, it is difficult to consider the college, not to mention the farm, without him.

Works Cited:

Aley, Janet "Bingo" (Ramsey). "A Little Upstream." In Black Mountain College: Sprouted Seeds: An Anthology of Personal Accounts, edited by Mervin Lane, 149-151. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1990.

"Bascomb Allen." Black Mountain College Community Bulletin (September 1946): 3. Found in the Horace McGuire Wood Papers, 1933-1972, Black Mountain College Collection, Western Regional Archives, Asheville, NC, USA.

Borsodi, Ralph. Flight from the City: An Experiment in Creative Living on the Land. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1933.

Duberman, Martin. Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1972.

Evarts, John. "The Total Approach." Forum 6 (December 1967): 20-25.

Harris, Mary Emma. The Arts at Black Mountain College. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987.

Herwitz, Gisela Kronenberg. "The Work Program." In Student Experience in Experimental in the Early Years (1933-43), edited by Robert Sunley. Online: Black Mountain College Project, 1997. (The Black Mountain College Project site is currently unavailable online. However it can be accessed through archive.org.)

Reynolds, Katherine C. Visions and Vanities: John Andrew Rice of Black Mountain College. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1998

Sly, Allan. "Excerpts from taped reminiscences of Black Mountain." Found in Mervin Lane Manuscripts, 1987-1989, Black Mountain College Collection, Western Regional Archives, Asheville, NC, USA.

Weston, Norman B. "Draft of possible 'Personal Account' to be delivered at Black Mountain College Reunion" (4 pages), Black Mountain College Reunion Statements, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, March 6-8, 1992.

a field trip to black mountain college

since 2009, the black mountain college museum + art center has organized an annual conference called reviewing black mountain college. the conference includes performances, talks, and panels and the last two conferences had a thematic focus. last year, the focus was john cage. this year's focus was buckminster fuller, who, among many other things, was a faculty member at black mountain college in the summers of 1948 and 49.

it was a good conference and a lot went down. for this post, though, i want to focus on my favorite part of the conference: the field trip to the lake eden campus of black mountain college.

alice sebrell, program director of BMCMAC and one of the main organizers of the conference, led the field trip. she began by explaining that when BMC started, in 1933, they were across the valley at the blue ridge campus, where they stayed until 1941. from 1941 to 1956, the college existed on the lake eden campus. throughout the tour, alice told fascinating stories and anecdotes about the college and shared a thick photo album that brought to life the buildings, campus, and college.
 

alice was sure to include a number of bucky fuller-related nuggets. for example, when we got to the studies building, the beautiful, modern building that BMC students, staff, and faculty designed and built between 1940 - 41, alice brought us to the room that bucky slept in during his stay at the college. a sudden and prolonged hush filled the room. as other tour members began filing into "bucky's room," the guy next to me, wearing a "i heart domes" shirt, whispered to the incoming group, "this is where bucky slept!" a sudden and prolonged hush fell upon the group.

i must admit i was less interested in bucky stuff and more interested in farm and food stuff, including the dining hall, where our campus tour began. the dining room was, well, the dining room - the place where students, faculty, and faculty families sat, at tables of eight, to break bread in the morning, afternoon, and evening. it was also a space of endless talking, scheming, suggesting, debating, arguing, and fighting. after meals, student work crews moved the tables and chairs to the side and the dining room was transformed - into a rehearsal space for the dancers, into a performance hall for the musicians, into a lecture hall for speakers, or into a dance hall for saturday evening dances.

while the tour group was in the dining room, i snuck into the kitchen. the kitchen is an essential part of my research on the farm at black mountain college. the kitchen was where they took dairy, meat, and produce from the farm and made it into meals. further, the kitchen was where a remarkable group of men and women, mostly black, worked hard and creatively to feed the college. BMC kitchen staff -- each of whom will soon receive a blog post of their own -- included jack lipsey (chef, 1933 - 1945), his wife rubye lipsey (assistant chef, 1934 - 1945), and cornelia williams (cook, 1947 - approximately 1950).

our field trip also included a tour of a student lodge, what was once the quiet house, and the studies building. as the official tour ended, alice turned to the group of about thirty or forty and said, "if folks feel like walking a bit, we can take a quick tour of the farm and, er, maybe david silver would be willing to say some words about the farm." (this wasn't a surprise for me. i had the good fortune of carpooling to BMC with alice and during our ride she asked if i might want to share some stories about the farm. i believe my answer was: "yes! oh hell yes!") then, like so many black mountain college students, staff, and faculty before us, we walked, about twenty or thirty of us, from the studies building, northward, up a gentle hill, and to the farm.

i was so excited to be at the farm that much of it is, alas, a daze. at one point, i do remember a fellow field tripper approaching me and asking some questions about BMC's livestock. my first reaction was surprise -- i totally knew the answers! my second reaction was to share my knowledge about the college's history of livestock -- from chickens to pigs to dairy to beef cattle. when i finished, i sensed something behind me. i turned around and saw about twenty people surrounding us, listening in, curious about the farm. "a talk about the farm at black mountain while at the farm at black mountain college," i thought to myself, "let's go!"

my talk was brief, about ten or fifteen minutes. i shared with the field trippers a brief history of the farm, from its student-initiated veggie garden in the 1930s to the farm buildings and pastures and livestock in the 1940s to its slow demise in the 1950s. i explained the role of the farm within the college's work program and the ways the farm was used to build community and encourage collaboration among students, staff, and faculty. and i shared some of BMC's sustainable practices -- everyday practices that would, today, immediately qualify the college as the country's "greenest" campus.

after some Q and A, we turned our backs to the farm and began a leisurely walk, southward, down the hill, towards and past the studies building, back to the parking lot, and into our cars. perhaps i'm projecting but at the time it seemed that many of us, myself included, wished we didn't have to leave so soon.

remy charlip, hooray for you!

when siena was about a year old, my sister lisa gave us a perfect day by remy charlip. in the book, what looks to be a father and son have a day's-worth of adventures - they eat breakfast, take a walk, meet friends for lunch, have a dance party, take a nap, paint pictures, read books, eat dinner, and go to sleep. remy's magical illustrations and simple, rhythmic writing ("invite some friends to eat some lunch / sing and dance with a friendly bunch") render the day perfect.

after a few reads of a perfect day, siena and i set out to our public library to find and fetch the rest of remy's books. we found, checked out, and read over and over fortunately, sleepytime rhyme, mother mother i feel sick send for the doctor quick quick quick, and, my favorite, little old big beard and big young little beard (or, as it's known 'round here, big beard and little beard). a year after lisa introduced me to remy charlip, i returned the favor by introducing big beard and little beard to lisa and jean's boys august and prosper.

sometime between reading a perfect day and big beard and little beard, i discovered that remy charlip spent thanksgiving 1951 and the summers of '52 and '53 at - where else? - black mountain college.

remy first learned about BMC through composer lou harrison, who, like remy, was a participant at reed college's summer institute of dance and theater in 1949. in fall 1951, remy accepted an invitation to visit BMC from harrison, then a faculty member at the college. remy drove with friends mc richards and david tudor in a car missing one door from new york city to black mountain, north carolina. from multiple accounts, remy was certainly at BMC for thanksgiving 1951.

remy returned to black mountain college in the summer of 1952. his most notable project / collaboration that summer was with john cage who, in addition to organizing what is now recognized as the world's first happening, was also working on sonatas and interludes, which he would eventually perform at BMC on august 16. remy designed the programs. as recounted in remembering black mountain college, remy made the programs out of cigarette papers: "I went to the print shop and set the whole text in the smallest possible type (8 pt). The type was so small, I had to use a magnifying glass and tweezers, and yet it filled the cigarette paper I printed it on. When I stacked all the programs up on the table near the entrance, they were less than a half an inch high. I placed matches and a bowl of tobacco next to them on the table. I arranged the seats in a circle looking in, with an ashtray on each seat, so that the audience could smoke their programs as they listened to the program" (p. 83).

it was the summer of 1953, though, that remy was part of history. when black mountain college invited dancer merce cunningham to take part in the college's 1953 summer institute, Merce agreed under the following conditions: he would not take a salary if four of his students (carolyn brown, remy charlip, jo anne melscher, and marianne preger simon) could spend the summer at BMC with free room and board. three other students (anita dencks, viola farber, and paul taylor) either paid tuition or received work-study scholarships. as mary emma harris notes in her landmark book the arts at black mountain college, "at Black Mountain Cunningham was able to have several weeks of concentrated work with both dancers and musicians without the distraction of parti-time jobs, hassles with unions, and the cost of studio space. The cavernous dining hall in which the dancers worked provided a flexible space for rehearsals and performances" (p. 234). that summer at black mountain college, the merce cunningham dance company, perhaps the most influential dance troupe in all modern dance, formed - and remy charlip was a part of it.

remy charlip was extraordinarily talented. his titles included dancer, choreographer, actor, costume designer, graphic designer, calligrapher, painter, mask maker, stage director and designer, educator, and, later, children's book author and illustrator. but the title that interests me the most was "food procurer." remy was an expert food thief.

in carolyn brown's wonderful book chance and circumstance: twenty years with cage and cunningham, we find remy in 1950, in the lower east side. putting into practice his experience as a costume designer, remy wears an army-surplus coat that "sported custom-made pockets that opened into cavernous inner linings ready to receive cartloads of produce from local grocery stores." brown continues: "Once a week for a month or two one winter, we gathered for dinner at 12 East Seventeenth Street in Merce's top-floor loft. A five-pound T-bone steak, brazenly dropped into the caverns of Remy's greatcoat, fed us all." later, she writes: "We rehearsed Thanksgiving Day, then a dozen or so people went to Merce's loft to address flyers for the season while John and M.C. and Nick [Cernovich] made a glorious dinner. The Thanksgiving turkey - mammoth size - was a gift from Remy and the A&P." brown concludes: "we felt guilty, but none of us ever said no to two-inch slabs of sirloin steak!" (quotes from pages 88, 89, 92, and 88).

as i'll explain in some future blog post, remy's food-lifting skills became essential learning during the 1950s at black mountain college. in fall 1954, due to dire financial realities, black mountain college moved out of its lower campus which included the kitchen and the dining room. also in fall 1954, farmer doyle jones quit. meals were no longer served. a steady stream of dairy, vegetables, and meat no longer existed. miraculously, for nearly two more years the college survived - partially, i think, from the kinds of skills BMC students may have learned from remy charlip.

last month, remy charlip died. for more on remy's remarkable life, see the obituaries in SFGate, the new york times, and publishers weekly (the last includes comments left by people who knew remy), as well as john held, jr.'s remy charlip: the art of being an artist in SFAQ online. remy was 83.

i marked remy's passing the only way i knew how: by taking siena to the downtown berkeley library and checking out some remy charlip books. when the elevator opened to the fourth floor, siena dashed to the rocket ship and i dashed to the C area. i found this:


siena and i borrowed some classics - mother mother i feel sick send for the doctor quick quick quick and, of course, big beard and little beard. we also checked out hooray for me!, a book remy co-authored with lilian moore that features the paintings of vera b. williams, who, among many other things, studied graphic arts from 1945 - 1949 at - where else? - black mountain college.

hooray for you, remy charlip, and thank you from me and we.

my sabbatical

this year i am on sabbatical - my first! no teaching, no service at 3/4 salary. it lasts a whole year.

i will spend it researching and writing the history of the farm at black mountain college, a small, liberal arts college that existed in north carolina from 1933-1956. my sabbatical will include research trips to a number of archives, building my bibliography, and writing the first few chapters of what i hope becomes a book.

for the last year and a half, i have been studying the history of this highly experimental and influential college. i read and re-read martin duberman's black mountain: an exploration in community and mary emma harris's the arts at black mountain college. i poured through mervin lane's black mountain college: sprouted seeds: an anthology of personal accounts, fielding dawson's the black mountain book, and, my favorite, michael rumaker's black mountain days. i also visited, with help from USF's faculty development fund (or FDF), the black mountain college museum + arts center collection at ramsey library at the university of north carolina asheville (blog post; flickr set).

this summer, again with FDF support, i visited the BMC motherlode, the black mountain college collection at the western regional archives in asheville, north carolina (flickr set; carolina public press article about the collection and my research visit). also this summer, i visited the mc richards papers at the getty research institute, in los angeles (flickr set).

during my sabbatical, i will expand my archival research with four more research trips.

in late september and early october, i will travel to asheville, NC, to visit again the black mountain college collection at the western regional archives. while in asheville, i'll attend and give a talk at the reviewing black mountain college 4 conference.

later in fall, i'll travel to the a. lawrence kocher collection at the john d. rockefeller, jr library, in williamsburg, virginia. kocher was a professor of architecture at black mountain college from 1940 - 1943, and was responsible for designing not only the now-famous studies building but also a barn, two silos, a milkhouse, and a tool shed/corn crib

in early spring, i'll return to north carolina, this time to boone, to visit the john a. rice papers in the belk library and information commons at appalachian state university. rice was one of the founders of black mountain college and was responsible for much of its early pedagogical and community principles.

in late spring, i'll travel to the east coast, first to bethany, connecticut, to visit the josef & anni albers foundation, and then to storrs, CT, to visit the charles olson research collection.

i look forward to my sabbatical project and hope to use this blog to share my findings and research. comments are, as always, highly encourage and much appreciated.

a ten-day trip to north carolina

sarah, siena, and i recently returned from a ten-day trip to north carolina. we stayed mostly in hickory, where sarah's friend and college roommate pattie, her husband dan, and their daughters kenzie and maya live. good times for all, including the girls.


for three days, i bolted to nearby asheville. with help from a USF faculty development fund award, i was able to spend time with the black mountain college museum + arts center collection at ramsey library at the university of north carolina asheville.


black mountain college, or BMC, was a small liberal arts college that existed between 1933 - 1957 in the blue ridge mountains in western north carolina. the focus of black mountain college was the education of the whole human being.

for its time - and for our times - black mountain college was massively experimental. faculty owned the university. all students, faculty, and faculty families lived on campus, where they ate together in the dining hall and danced together on saturday nights. there were no grades. classes were not mandatory but once enrolled, students - as well as professor - were expected to be fully prepared and participatory. at the center of the curriculum was arts because arts encourage students to focus, create, engage, and cooperate. students were included in nearly all meetings and committees, even those responsible for faculty hiring and firing. the responsibilities of running the college were shared by all.

i am especially interested in BMC's work program. black mountain college combined formal studies and physical labor. in between classes and coursework, students - and sometimes faculty - cleared the hillside for pasture, waited tables in the dining room, maintained campus roads, hauled coal, dug ditches, collected field stones for masonry work, served and cleared four o'clock tea, and, miraculously, designed and built a building.


my main interest is the farm on black mountain college. in particular, i am interested in the history of the farm and its changing role within the college and its work program. i am interested in the farm work - who taught the skills? who organized the teams? who did the work? i am also interested in the farm's output - what was grown? which animals were raised? who got the food? and finally, i am interested in how the farm was used as a creative and collaborate space for student and faculty learning.





black mountain college is primarily known and remembered for the remarkable faculty, visiting faculty, and students it attracted. a partial list includes josef and anni albers, ruth asawa, john cage, robert creeley, merce cunningham, willem and elaine de kooning, buckminster fuller, alfred kazin, jacob lawrence, charles olson, arthur penn, robert rauschenberg, and m.c. richards. new and important things happened here - bucky fuller would attempt his first geodesic dome, john cage would stage the world's first "happening," and merce cunningham would form his dance company.

because of this, black mountain college has received plenty of attention. there's martin duberman's black mountain college: an exploration in community and mary emma harris' the arts at black mountain college. there's cathryn davis and neeley house's documentary fully awake: black mountain college and the black mountain college project. and then there's the über archive, the black mountain college collection at the state archives in raleigh, north carolina.

after three days in asheville, i said thanks to sally klipp, special collections librarian at ramsey library, and drove back to hickory. then, pattie, dan, kenzie, maya, sarah, siena, and i drove to blowing rock for a few days in a log cabin in the mountains. fun, watermelon, and good food were had by all.




before we left, i asked pattie when the best times are to visit north carolina. "april and october," she answered without hesitation. thinking of my sabbatical a year from now, i said, "cool - we'll be back then."