Lawrence Today, Volume 65, Number 2, Spring 1985 Lawrence University
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Lawrence University Lux Alumni Magazines Communications Spring 1985 Lawrence Today, Volume 65, Number 2, Spring 1985 Lawrence University Follow this and additional works at: http://lux.lawrence.edu/alumni_magazines Part of the Liberal Studies Commons © Copyright is owned by the author of this document. Recommended Citation Lawrence University, "Lawrence Today, Volume 65, Number 2, Spring 1985" (1985). Alumni Magazines. Book 100. http://lux.lawrence.edu/alumni_magazines/100 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Communications at Lux. It has been accepted for inclusion in Alumni Magazines by an authorized administrator of Lux. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CONTENTS Editorial LAWRENCE Richard E. Morrison Director of Public Relations Today Anne Atwood Mead Edilor/Assistant Direcwr of Public Vol. 65, No. 2 Relations Spring 1985 Win Thrall Graphic Designer Paula Slater 2 Poet in Steel Composition Rolf Westphal, Lawrence's first Frederick Layton Rick Peterson Spans Information Director Distinguished Visiting Professor in Studio Art, is a big sculptor with big plans. Staff 4 Sudanese: The Next to Starve? J. Gilbert Swift, '59 Oireuor of Alumni Relations Has Western exploitation created imminent Kristine Hipp Sauter famine? jay O'Brien, assistant professor of Assistant Director of Alumni Relations anthropology, thinks so. Katy Schwartz, '84 " Alumni Today" Editor 8 A Way with Words Alumn1 Association Board A talk with Susan Herr Engberg, '62, writer par excellence of short stories. jane Paulson Gregerson, '69 President 11 Small Voices Robert]. Felker, 'SO Short fiction by Susan Herr Engberg. Chairman, Alumni Clubs Marijean Meisner Flom, '50 Chairwoman, Alumni·Smdent 14 A Life in the Theater Relations David Chambers, '68, and Kingsley Day, '73, have judy Jahnke Gildemeister, M-D '64 careers in the theater that are worth watching. Secretary Barbara Brandt Hughes, M-D '62 Chairwoman , Nominations and 18 In a Category by Himself Awards A tribute to Marshall Hulbert, '26/'32, by President Marcia Ouin Mentkowski, M-D '61 Richard Warch. Chairwoman, Alumni-Admission Michael G. O'Neil, '65 Chairman, Alumni Developmenl Departments Robert J. Schaupp, '51 Prcsidem-Elect 21 Currents Nancy Lock Schreiber, '59 Chairwoman, Public Relations and 23 Faculty Today Association Programs Scott W. Alexander, '71 24 Sports William M. Bauer, '72 Jeff Bowen, '60 p. 8 26 Alumni Today Chris A. Bowers, '70 Bruce M. Brown, '69 35 Alumni Club News joan Stebbins Des Isles, M-D '38 Kenneth K. DuVall, Jr., '52 Letters Helen Buscher Franke, '60 David E. Frasch, '69 Inserts Andrew S. Mead, '77 Colleen Held Messana, '68 Lawrence Ahead Today David L. Mitchell, '71 Margaret). Park, M-D '40 Gift Catalog William 0. Rizzo, '70 Phyms Anderson Roberts, '56 jeanne Albrecht Young, M-D '46 Phyllis Weikart Greene, M-D '47 Photo credits: Cover, John lewis; inside Lawrence Today is published quarterly by Member-at-large front cover; John lewis; pages 8, 9, 10, Scott lawrence University. Articles arc expressly Baron Perlman, '68 Whitcomb, '86; page 15, Jennifer Girard; the opinions of the authors and do not Member-at-large page 17, Martin Schweig; pages 19 , 21, John necessarily represent official university Christopher M. Vernon, '67 lewis; page 23, Image Studios; page 24, Rick policy. Correspondence and address changes Member-at-large Peterson; page 25, Mark Courtney; page 35, should be addressed to Lawrence Today, Richard L. Y :atzeck Scott Whitcomb: back cover, Jim Auer, '50; lawrence University, P.O. Box 599, Faculty Representative gift catalog, Scott Whitcomb Appleton, WI 54912. Lawrence University promotes equal oppor tunity for an. Poet in Steel Rolf Westphal, sculptor, has big plans for Wisconsin and environs by james Auer, '50 &If Westphal is a big man who thinks bigger. Bearded, resolute, standing nearly six feet tall in his stocking feet, he is the undisputed master of the former paper factory that has been converted into a sculpture studio on the Lawrence campus. A large-scale metalworker with experience both as a producing ar tist and a museum functionary, Westphal came to Appleton last summer as the first Frederick Layton Distinguished Visiting Pro fessor of Studio Art. With five years ahead of him in the position, funded-and founded-through a gift to Lawrence from the Milwaukee-based Layton Foundation, Westphal is in a position to think ambitiously and move deliberately. And he is doing both as he plots to bring to Wisconsin and environs the same kind of epic works, con~ ceived and executed on a massive Large, abstract and geometric sculptures are Westphal's trademark. This one adoms a site in Turkey. scale, that he has already brought to sites from Detroit and Kansas City to Yugoslavia, Finland, Poland and Turkey. favored countries aren't able to Born in Germany and reared in But there's a catch: money. draw on. International Falls, Minn., the " When one deals in the public And he's certain he'll be able to multilingual artist/teacher has a realm," he admits, doubtless out of find public or, ideally, private spon~ range of personal and professional painful experience, "the costs are sorship for the huge, abstract pieces experiences less well~traveled artists so staggering, it demands public he intends to construct in his river~ might envy. funding. It 's a very precarious ball side studio for shipment elsewhere. He was trained at the Kansas City game. " " American patronage has been Art Institute in Missouri (BFA, 1970) As a result, the careers of many quite good because it's all private," and at the Cranbrook Academy of younger artists who have hopes of he believes. Art, Bloomfield Hills, Mich. (MFA , doing generously proportioned " In the USSR and eastern Europe, 1972), where by his own admission, works become bogged down and it's all socialized. They never he spent as much time with the ar~ discouraged. separate the wheat from the chaff. chitectural students as with his But not Westphal's. Good artists have to be fanatics to fellow sculptors. He's convinced that the United do what they do!'' He began h_is career, conven States has resources other, less tionally enough, as a teacher, first 2 LAWRENCE T O DAY at Clarion State College in Penn geographic situation with a man An invitation to work in Hungary, sylvania, then as a visiting professor imposed aesthetic. In a nutshell, obtained through a Hungarian artist at the Vancouver College of Art and that's a search for the Holy Grail. whom he met in Poland, still is Design in British Columbia, the You must be concerned with hanging fire. And he has an exhibi Kansas Art Institute and the Univer everything from coordinating loads tion of his work tentatively coming sity of Texas, Austin. of steel to local values. It's a up in Switzerland. Along the way he expanded his remarkable experience.' ' At the moment Westphal is work personal horizons by serving as In addition to English, Westphal ing on a somewhat less ambitious curator at the Contemporary Arts speaks fluent German and Spanish scale-creating an edition of small Museum, Houston, in 1977 and '78. and " a little bit of Italian," so com bronzes, which he calls "earth It was, he says now, " an incredi munication is not a problem. Fur scapes with miniature animals." ble experience for me. As an artist, thermore, " blueprints are an inter He is also getting to know the I'd had a preconceived idea of the national Language, so I can relate in Fox Valley, which rather to his sur museum world. Once I was inside a that fashion. There's no real crisis prise, offers just about everything a museum, I got a look at how things abroad.'' plastic artist could need, from foun really work.'' Surprisingly, considering the state dries and architectural supplies to Building an exhibition, he soon of East-West relations over the last graphic-arts firms. discovered, was a great deal like decade or so, Westphal's ex Too, he is familiarizing himself practicing architecture-a love of periences overseas have all been with the Lawrence faculty and stu his since his meeting with a travel " extremely positive." dent body. ing Finnish architect as a small boy His first major international com It has all added up, he says, to an in Michigan. mission was for the state of extremely illuminating experience. A particular joy of executing Slovenia, in the northern part of Unlike some of the other cam sculptural contracts, he believes, is Yugoslavia, in 1978. Here, he puses on which he has functioned, the opportunity it affords an artist pulled an ingenious-and doubtless, Lawrence has neither a large art to work with architects. startling-double-play, combining department nor a graduate school. But here, again, a general lack of the outdoor icons common to the But the students "have diverse in money impedes progress. mountain villages of Slovenia with terests and great intellectual ap " It 's not a very fruitful relation the mythology and culture of the petites. [So] what you don't have in ship," he confesses, " unless the ar American Indian. an art school, you can make up in chitect has funding available. Ar " It was quite a radical piece, mix the literary." chitects are in a bad position ing icons with horse hair and cow Lawrence, in fact, can provide today-it's hard for them to prac skulls, but after I left, it turned out him with just about everything he tice their art because of econ to be very popular. Indian imagery could require-except for that most omics." is quite a rarity there." important commodity of all, well Westphal's own quest for com Other Westphal works-large, heeled patrons.