BIOGRAPHY Biography, sort of, Kendall Shaw (The great depression made decent jobs scarce, and I needed employment.)

1942 “…and, I’m fired?

“I am sorry, Mr. Shaw. We do not think that you are good telephone company managerial material.” They were correct!

I was wearing my cheap new turquiose blue green suit with an orange tie, a pink shirt, yellow cloth shoes, but not cousin Charlie’s hand down fashionable tasteful light grays that had previously impressed the city manager. Or was it the beer break Tommy and I took across Poydras Street when the other employees took their coffee breaks? We were careful about time.-- Perhaps Mr. Poteet had become alarmed by my passion for color. I never had an art course in the lower schools, but my bedroom was a busy art studio for me, and from my back yard garden, I learned the power of color. I grew up making much art on my own. I also acted in plays at New Orleans little theatre, Le Petite Theatre du Vieux Carre. My Fortier High School sweater ”F” was for my place on the debating team.

1945 The U. S. Navy transferred me from active duty in flying in our splendid little, easy to maneuver SBD Dauntless dive bombers to V-12 officer’s training at Georgia Tech. I had studied little math, and no science in high school, but now at Tech, I was eager to learn more about the way math , physics and chemistry came together, so that the universe was not all chaos, and even measurable!

1949 My physical chemistry teacher, Ruth Rogan Beneritto, told me of work I could have in atomic research, which interested me, with the U. S. at Oak Ridge , I would be able to study for a PhD at the University of Tennessee in nearby Knoxville and be well paid for doing atomic research while still a student.. No! atomic bombs are made there; I will not do that. Received a BS in chemistry from Tulane with math, physics, engineering minor.

1951 While studying toward a PhD in chemistry at State University I met art students George Dureau, Ben Freeman, and others. I took the first art course of my life in painting with visiting social surrealist painter O. Louis Guglielmi. His insistence upon the integrity of the artist and his art work related to my family’s Quaker background. It also let me know that art had a true life force in community. It is real! Art became to me all that mattered. At the end of the semester, I quit studies in science, and went to NewYork City to study with Stuart Davis, Ralston Crawford, and further with O. Louis Gugliemi. Gugliemi introduced them and their wives to me at his Second Avenue studio and apartment, a few nights after my arrival. They became my friends before I could study with them.

1951-1954 Hired to be a chemical engineer doing research by the huge Stauffer Chemical Company. Became assistant to the Sales Manager. Quit when I learned they were planning to promote me to be a vice-president., which would distract me from painting. 1953-54 Waited tables at the new Rienzi Café that friends had opened on Macdougal Street, a fine intellectual and art spot in the Village. Abstract expressionist artist, David Grossblatt owned and managed it with artist friends. Patrons were Wolf Khan, and a brilliant painter, Gandhi Brody and also, many existential writers from NYU, as well as people ,who had studied with Hans Hofmann. Unlike Davis, the painters at the Rienzi all used soft edges , brush work for feeling.

1954-55 Returned to the winter warmth of New Orleans. I helped my brother-in-law drill for oil in Louisiana and Mississippi. Married Frances Fort after the Kendall Shaw well in Melville, near Krotz Springs struck oil.

1957 -60 I began study at Newcomb College of toward an MFA degree. Upon viewing my paintings, the faculty asked me to be a teaching assistant with a comfortable monthly stipend, full tuition and a nice studio. I also managed art gallery installations with an assistant. Sculptor George Rickey directed a lively art department. He brought fine artists to visit and teach, including Kurt Kranz from Hamburg , who had studied at the Bauhaus. It was similar to study at the Bauhaus to assist Kurt , which I did, and fortunately, I also assisted in class, the superb abstract expressionist painter, Ida Kohlmeyer. Then visited to work with graduate students for a couple of months. Mark changed my way of painting, and Ida Kohlmeyer did her best painting after his visit there. After Mark, design stepped aside for feeling to arrive. Ida was a fine painting companion, and she was generous with time and encouragement.

1961-66 Brilliant architect, Charles R. Colbert, Dean of the School of Architecture at Columbia University asked me to teach all the two and three dimensional design classes at Columbia, and give the students intense experience in drawing. Colbert turned a large classroom in Avery Hall into a studio for me, so that architecture students could visit me, while I worked. I chaired a lively exhibition committee. Most of the students had a BA or its equivalent, so that class communication was usually rewarding.

1965 I was invited to lecture at a UNESCO conference that was held at the University of London. The topic for the meeting was to be the “Higher Education of the professional artist.” I spoke twice, first pointing out how rapidly the scientific, cultural and art worlds are changing, and so I advocated as broad an education as possible. At a session on nature in art, I suggested that our modern environments are still part of nature , and my nature might include the super market. I was invited to teach at the university of Reading, Hull and Sir William Coldstream, Chair of the National Council on art Education, and Principal at the fine Slade School of London University asked me to teach there. I returned to Columbia, because of the dynamic New York art scene.

Some lesser architect teachers at Columbia were nostalgic for Victorian romanticism, and they reacted against Charles Colbert’s progressive architectural forms and values. Unfortunately for the school, they found a way to replace Mr. Colbert as Dean. I was an assistant professor. Not significant academic position, when I resigned in 1966. new Dean of the School of Architecture was not an architect, but a clumsy engineer; the school had changed. Rather than seek employment elsewhere, I preferred to remain in the art world of , and teach part time , so that I would be able to spend much time painting. Since then I have taught at Parsons School of Design, FIT, the very great Brooklyn Museum Art School, where I chaired the painting area, I became Assistant Director, and for a short time I was Acting Director. When the Museum Board asked me to be the Director, I said, “no.” I wanted to spend as much time in my studio painting as I could.

While still living in New Orleans, I became a member of a fine contemporary artists cooperative, the Orleans /gallery, where my best friend, Ida Kohlmeyer also exhibited. I had one person exhibitions there in 1960, 1961 and 1963.

I shall send a New York exhibition record to you tomorrow. Thank you, ken