Present Joys

“There’s something about this place that’s addictive as hell.”

Those are the words of Danny Hinty, who’s managed CCAD’s Art Supply Store since 1974. A few weeks ago, I sat down with him to conduct an oral history interview—to try and glean some information about our school’s collective story over the past few decades.

I started looking through old CCAD Archives photography largely with a view to using it as part of an advertising campaign, but I’ve found it so compelling I want to do something more permanent with it. That’s what’s brought me to do these oral history interviews—I want verbal memories to accompany the photographs. Lord willing, I’m going to put all this stuff into a big, unwieldy “CCAD family scrapbook”. This fits in with my thesis project’s theme: a nostalgic celebration of the CCAD family.

Besides Mr. Hinty, I’ve also interviewed:

• Lowell Tolstedt, dean of fine arts 1967–2005
• Gail Storer, school librarian since 1980
• Nanette Hayakawa, administrator since 1979
• Frank Laskowski, alumnus and faculty 1967–2012
• Helen Hoffelt, CCAD kid, alumna, and faculty since 1955
• Stewart McKissick, alumnus and faculty since 1975
• Jeff Fisher, Financial VP since 1982

I have plans to do several additional interviews in the next week or so. It’s been a blast. It’s a little like panning for gold, I imagine. A ton of effort goes into coordinating a meeting, not to mention conducting the interview itself. But every conversation turns up at least one real gem. With every conversation, I’m getting a little better at asking the right questions that elicit meaningful, interesting responses. After each interview, I have my contributors fill out a release form that will allow me to use their words and stories as part of my overall campaign.

What’s next?

I’m still working on those sweaters. Remember those? I’ll fill you in on all the details soon. In the meantime, I’ve been working hard to finish transcribing all the interviews I’ve recorded. I’ve also been laying out the “scrapbook” and investigating methods of printing.

Day 87: mon, 24 mar 2014. I’m jealous of Mr. McKissick’s cool old ash tray.

CCAD students, 1950s. Those drawing horses and easels look eerily familiar, don’t they? And check out those smocks.

After I got my knitting machine, I practiced quite a bit. I made a sweater vest on it. Then I got distracted with other parts of my thesis and trailed off practicing. And now look at the calendar! It’s already march and I need to get my act together. Last week, I did some retail investigation into grading and sizing of commercial pullover-style garments. I combined my findings with my own notes about the pattern I want to create. At this point, I have a solid sweater pattern in sizes s, m, l, and xl.

Now that I have patterns, I’m ready to start making test garments. A few days ago, I called the people in South Bloomfield who will be spinning and dying yarn for me, and I made a small preliminary order—just enough yarn so I can create one sample sweater in each size.

I’m not anticipating a lot of trouble with the pattern, but it’s high time to have the final materials in my hands and to start making finished garments. Once I iron out any difficulties, I will essentially be ready to start producing en masse!

What’s next?

Speaking of en masse, I’m getting a little anxious about all the sweaters I need to make! While I’m not interested in making thousands of sweaters, I would like everyone who wants one to have one—and I don’t want to be running a sweatshop to get it all done. I really need to find a way to produce the knitted pieces I need offsite. When I go pick up this first batch of yarn, I’m going to ask Toia about outsourcing some of the machine-knitting work so I can produce more overall garments!

I’ve got a couple thousand photos from CCAD archives on my hard drive. They’ve been surprisingly easy to flip through, so I’ve looked at them all several times, tagging them in Bridge with lots of keywords and ratings. Besides the ones I’ve looked at, there are many more libraries of other old photos: architecture, student work, construction projects, etc. I could spend an eternity looking through everything.

But that’s totally distracting! My plan is to celebrate CCAD by making things. As of now, I’m planning to make a book. I don’t know if the book will ever actually get made, but I’m thinking about it in those terms. Ideally, I’d love to create a list luxurious coffee-table-style book that would be printed in a small edition and sold as a premium item. But I want to be fastidious about the quality of the printing, I know I don’t have time to oversee that. Instead of a physical book, I may opt for some kind of interactive website. Who knows at this point? Time is going by so quickly and I’m feeling stressed!

Leah and I made a list of people with a long history at the school who might be fun to talk to. Some of them I know but many I don’t! I love nothing more than to contact all of them and spend a lot of time in conversation about the way CCAD used to be. I’ll be working to track them down and schedule meetings soon.

What’s next?

Oh yeah, I’m making sweaters, too! I’ll be buying a small batch of yarn soon so I can get started with test garments. Beyond that, I still need to find a mentor. I’ve reached out to some people at Homage, because I think they’ll have some great wisdom about my concept.