Lakeland College

Interview with Bill Weidner

Title: An Interview with Bill Weidner

Project: Lakeland Oral History Project

Interviewee: Bill Weidner

Interviewer: Jessica Lillie

Interview location and date: Lakeland College Verhulst Building, Plymouth, Wisconsin on March 5th, 2008

Length of interview: 1 hour, 2 minutes, 17 pages

Name Index: Bill Weidner, Jessica Lillie, Denise Presnel-Weidner, Karl Elder, Charlie Krebs, John Thorndike, Ted Palton, Janet Herrick, Franklin Weidner.

Abstract: This interview considers Bill Weidner's transition to Lakeland College. He discusses changes at the school, his frustrations and successes. Personal anecdotes have also been included.

Introduction: Jessica Lillie is a sophomore at Lakeland College. This interview was conducted as part of an Oral History class taught be Dr. Rick Dodgson. It was recorded using a hand-held digitally recorded and transcribed using Microsoft Word 2006. Bill Weidner is an art professor of Lakeland College. He and his wife, Denise Presnel-Weidner, have both been teaching at Lakeland for 19 years. They moved from Louisiana when their son was three years old. Bill has two children: a daughter, 16, and a son, 22. He has worked at many schools across the country, and he loves to play guitar. His one love, which is discussed at some length, is art. Professor Weidner requested that his transcript not be significantly edited for grammatical coherence but certain questions and answers unrelated to the focus of this interview have been edited out.

An Interview with Professor Bill Weidner

Bill Weidner:

Well right, that just got brought up just recently at a faculty meeting, how when you interview people you're supposed to use a form and all this stuff. I'm not worried about it, I'm not gonna tell you anything that I don't want you to say. Okay? So don't worry — you don't have to. If your teacher says you gotta do some form, I understand, but I'm not worried about it. I think that's — it's like every time we turn around, there's a... being a creative person, and that's probably why Karl Elder was so upset about it too at the faculty meeting, he expressed just how upset he was about it. Being a creative person, all that does it just crimps everybody's style. It crimps your style and what kind of questions you might like to ask, it crimps my style and how I might like to answer them. Everybody — you know, we're, it's just gets in the way of creativity. It's like it's one more thing in our life where we're told it must be done this way rather than just kind of letting it happen, you know, you can't even have a conversation with someone without ah...

Lillie:

A signature? Paperwork?

Weidner:

Yeah, yeah. I mean it's hard to understand why they come up with these rules but it's just... Ahh, too much.

Lillie:

Well, we agree at least a little bit on that point.

[Noise interruption — Bill gets one of his students, AJ, to close the door for him]

Lillie:

Actually, I saw a couple of your posters outside for your show tonight. I was planning on coming.

Weidner:

Feel free to come if you're not — Here, you can have one, it's at the Funky Bean... [Description of shopping area where the Funky Bean is located]

Lillie:

It said on your posters, yeah, that the proceeds donate to the AIDS resource center? How long have you been doing that?

Weidner:

No, it's the first time. What gave me the idea was that as like a little gift at Christmastime, couple of my friends, well, one of em's, one of em's a good friend, [stutter] he's gay, and he, his partner, who's obviously also gay, his partner's a musician, and he, uh, he put out this CD of his own piano music, and they just gave it to us as a Christmas gift, this CD, but in that case they said that if we wanted to donate money to Wisconsin AIDS research or whatever it's called, that we could donate money so my wife wrote a check and we donated some money, cuz' you know, that's an important thing to try to find a cure for. But it gave me — but then it also said that he was also selling his CDs and any sales that he would get — I mean, he just gave us one — but any sales that and that gave me the idea, I says yeah, I'll jump on that bandwagon, I'll do that too. In my case, you know, my CDs are homemade, so the level of professionalism — I've gotten better, in fact I've just recently, whatcha call it? Re-mastered the CD so that the sound from one song to the same, you don't have to adjust the volume on your stereo. When I first put it I was like wow, that song was recorded louder, the other one less loud, and I'd done as good as I could do in terms of the quality of the music, but I hadn't really learned everything about mastering, and now I've got this program recently on how to master which levels out the sound so that from song to song so it sounds a little more professional, just like when you listen to a professional CD. Usually don't have to turn one song up or one song down, unless you just want to because you …

Lillie:

You like the song so much?

Weidner:

Because you like the song so much, but generally it's recorded at a real even level so you can pretty much leave it. Well I did that and I just thought yeah, you know this music, I'm really a visual artist but music has always been this second biggest sort of love in my life and um, but I just thought well I might as well put it to a good cause cuz' when I do these gigs, I don't get paid very much money anyway so I'm not really doing it for the money. I get paid a little bit and I make some money in tips as well but I just thought you know? It's such an insignificant amount of money I might as well try to turn it into something where, something good can come from it.

Lillie:

That's great. So, what kind of music do you play? I know that you're a big fan of The Beatles, I keep hearing that you love The Beatles, but your own style, what would you call it?

Weidner:

I don't know. People that have listened to my own compositions do tend to tell me it sounds Beatle influenced, and I suppose that's probably true. But if you listen to it, see now that I'm recording I actually put on the, when I play tonight it's just gonna be me and my guitar, but on the recording you know I put in bass guitar, I put in maybe keyboards, I put in a drum track, and so forth, so it sounds like a full band when I'm recording, backup vocals. It's all gonna be stripped down tonight to just the bare essentials of one guitar and one voice. But yeah it's basically pop music, but more recently my own personal music leans more towards, it sounds more like pop-jazz as opposed to like pop-rock the way it's structured and so forth it's sounding a little bit more like pop-Jazz. Generally speaking, I don't play heavy metal, anything like that I like to rock out sometimes but that's really hard to do when you're playing solo. Generally speaking it's more a softer form of pop music but you know, I love the blues, so a little bit of bluesy thing here or there.

Lillie:

Sounds great, I'm excited to hear it.

Weidner:

It's kind of hard to describe.

Lillie:

Right. Well I'll know tonight for sure. So you're an art teacher, or professor here, and I've heard that you've subbed for music classes at least. Do you teach any music classes?

Weidner:

Yeah, I teach guitar out at, um, for about three years now, I think it's going on about my third year if I'm not mistaken, at Dreams Unlimited at Plymouth. I teach two evenings two, two nights per week, two evenings per week, on Monday evening and Wednesday evening out there, and I teach guitar lessons. Mostly it's younger kids, but I get some that are up in high school age, and every once and a while I'll get an older person. Not recently, but every once and a while I've gotten people that are, you know, like in their twenties or thirties or something. It's a lot of fun, I like doing it, plus the extra money comes in real handy cuz Lakeland doesn't pay me enough. You can leave that on your recording. You hear that? You don't pay me enough! So...

Lillie:

Is that an attribute of your being an art teacher, or just being in this school in general?

Weidner:

It's a little bit — we sort of inflicted that upon ourselves originally, when my wife and I first took this job all those years ago. We actually took it — we shared a full-time position primarily so we could have plenty of time to do our artwork. Well in more recent years, it's evolved into two full time positions. I mean, we're actually working the number of classes we teach is often over a full time load, and yet we, only two years ago, did we get bumped up to two three quarter time positions. So we should be paid as two full-time employees but we're not, at least not yet, like I said just a couple years ago it was bumped up to two three quarter load. And our art department is really healthy now, we have all kinds of art majors, more than what we can even handle for the size of the studios, there's no reason why they shouldn't bump us up to two full time loads. But that really sounds like I'm complaining, so...

Lillie:

I was asking about your teaching of art in general. So, what year did you start?

Weidner:

A long time ago. I think this is my 19th year here. I think we started in 1989, so I dunno, you do the math. I think we're in our 19th year. So we're like old folks we're almost the old guard among the faculty. Although I still don't feel like it. I can see now the young faculty that come in and they do now strike me as I what I used to kinda feel like, you know, young, know-everything kind of faculty. And they're fresh, with ideas, but what a fresh idea also needs to understand is the history of the school and why things are done the way they are. The school should always evolve and always change and always grow and always become better, but some of these ideas that younger faculty bring in are like, well if you only knew... just some of the ideas just won't work and they just don't understand, or they'll think they're saying something new that they think we've never heard before, and it's like common knowledge and so forth. So yeah, I'm becoming old in the sense that sort of I'm a little bit kind of... [Pause] cynical towards some of the new faculty and so forth, and I appreciate their high-spiritedness. What I don't appreciate, though, is when they don't have, and not just for myself, but for anybody that's been here a while, just sort of a respect. Just kind of a respect for people that have been here for a long time. And you should respect people just because they're older, there's you know, you actually do learn some things in life, and you should realize, well, maybe they actually know something. I mean sometimes they act like, you know, that... you know, you don't know anything, that they know everything. And they really don't, you know, they're the ones that don't know much. Not in terms of like — in things like technology, they probably know a lot more about technology because they grew up with it, I just mean about the whole process of teaching and so forth.

Lillie:

Only things you can pick up from experience.

Weidner:

Right! Right, right. And they're gonna become old too someday. They don't think so now but — I mean, I don't really feel that old, I'm not old now, but I'm starting to realize that I'm getting old. Oh, this interview's going nowhere.

Lillie:

Actually, it's doing better things than I expected. So you guys came here 19 years ago? What made you pick Lakeland? Have you lived in the area?

Weidner:

No. I didn't know the first thing about Wisconsin except that I heard it was cold. We, my wife and I both teach art, and before we had this job, we had a few other teaching jobs along the way. Um, but the one just prior to this one was in Shreveport, Louisiana. It was a pretty good teaching job for my wife, it was a full time for her and I landed, what would have been our second year there, I landed a half-time position, and my first year there I had like a part time position. So we were pretty well set up financially there, it was just that we had no idea... we knew that Louisiana was in the deep south and that there was gonna be a cultural shock of sorts, but until you actually live there, you don't really know what that means. And we had moved there from Atchison, Kansas, where we taught at Benedictine College for two years and prior to that we taught for one year at Keystone Junior College in Pennsylvania and before that I had a teaching job at Mercersburg Academy for a year... so our history of teaching had gone back a ways. But when we got back to Louisiana we realized, we don't want to live down here. Cuz by then we'd already had a kid, we had our son was born then, and it just didn't seem the right place to raise a kid. Racism in the deep south is still a pretty strong word. People say racism is everywhere, and they're right, it is, racism is up here too. But there's racism, and then there's racism. It's blatant down there, it's just plain blatant. We just didn't — we didn't want to raise our kid in that kind of environment. Plus, politics down there are really corrupt. Politics are corrupt everywhere, but once you live in a place like Louisiana, you realize that sometimes they can be even way more corrupt. So, we just, so we applied for jobs all over the country. We got an offer at this one, so we took it. And we had heard that the schools, the public schools — see, that's one of the things that really frightened us down there. The public schools were not good. And we knew we couldn't afford to send our son to private education, and I particularly didn't want to, I think I'd rather he went to a public school anyway, myself, but uh, you know they were just atrocious down there cuz they don't put their money into public education. And taxes are low down there, but you get what you pay for. Taxes go towards things like, like education... and so the schools down there were just, they're just really bad. I love the place otherwise, though. I love the climate, I love the natural beauty. If I were the kind of a person that wasn't also intent upon raising a family, I personally could've tolerated the racism and everything. But it, um, we just wanted to get out of there because we already had a kid. There was no special attraction to Lakeland. Like I said, we applied all over the country and Lakeland was one of the places and they offered us a job. So it was our ticket out of Louisiana, okay? So now I get to live with long winters instead of... they have really long summers down there, I mean winter never really comes. Not really. I mean, you know. But, up here it's almost the reverse. When is the summer ever gonna come?

Lillie:

Straight through April! How old is your son now?

Weidner:

He's in college, he goes to Madison. He's 22, 21? I dunno, I think he's 22, something like that. Ah, he might be 21. I'm trying to think when he became old enough to legally drink. Was it this summer, was it here, or was it last summer? Yeah, 21, 22, something like that.

Lillie:

What's his name?

Weidner:

Franklin. Well, he was born in '86, so you can do the math.

Weidner:

22?

Lillie:

Yeah. So, it seems like art has just always been what you've done.

Weidner:

Yeah, I'm a real artist.

Lillie:

I hear you put on competitive shows and things like that, too.

Weidner:

Yeah, I do, I uh, you mean that I've been in? Yeah, I've been in some... I've got a piece. I'm not working this way at all anymore, but um, I entered this piece from a few years ago just recently into Neville Public Museum has this annual park exhibition. And I used to enter kind of regularly, and then kinda got away from it for a few years. For some reason, but, I entered it again this year, but it turns out one of the pieces I entered won a prize. And they put it on there, I'm gonna show it to you, it's on their publication. It's probably on there. Yeah, there we go, 63rd annual art exhibition. [Bill turns his computer screen towards me, and displayed is his painting, which has a girl putting on ice skates.] And it didn't win the top prize, I actually had won the top prize before. And that's my painting right there, this one right here. And it won artistic merit award. There was a top prize that went to guy James Negel, best in show. And then there was like one, two, three, four artistic merit awards, for like second, third, fourth, or maybe they were all equal. I didn't go to the reception cuz I didn't want to drive there for it. But, I got two paintings in and that was one of them, and they put it on, even I didn't win the top award they put my painting on their thing there.

Lillie:

I like that. [the painting]

Weidner:

Thanks. That's my daughter right there, she's an ice skater.

Lillie:

How old's your daughter?

Weidner:

Well, she's, she's 16 now, she was... like I said, this painting's a little bit older, it was done, about four years ago. Now here's some of the other pieces, probably the award winners. They're not saying who did these... [mentions the other paintings on the screen for a minute or so.] But I'm not working that way at all these days, in fact I'm working abstractly now, non-representational, which I really enjoy, but I don't know if I'm gonna do it forever. I just had to change, I just got sick of doing that stuff, just really tired of it. And actually, that's not really representative of what I was mostly doing, I was mostly doing landscapes — urban landscapes, these door less, windowless urban landscapes which I did for a really long time, I did 'em for like ten years, and they got a lot of attention and got me into some galleries. And they sold pretty well, too, especially since they were pretty gloomy pictures with kind of a, sort of a gloomy outlook on life. They sold pretty well. They stopped selling almost completely after 9/11. I think the climate in the country changed in two ways. First of all, people looked at their money a whole lot more tightly and they weren't willing to spend money on artwork anymore. That was the number one thing. The number two thing was, there was enough gloominess in the real world that people didn't wanna also see it in their artwork. I think they wanted to see happier imagery, and these were a little bit on the gloomy side, a little dark, a little spooky really, these door less, windowless landscapes. They kinda suggested a real sense of isolation, alienation, people don't even know who their next door neighbor is, kind of an attitude. [pause] I mean, I don't really know... but I know they were selling pretty well before 9/11. We were actually, I mean my wife was selling even better than me, we were looking at it as a third source of income that was becoming significant. And then it just dried up, the climate of the country just totally changed with the 9/11 thing so then I thought, well, if I'm not gonna sell my artwork, at least I'll experiment and do some things I wanna do. Cuz I probably, without knowingly, had drifted into continuing to do them because they were selling. When I first started doing them, I wasn't doing them cuz I was looking for the formula of doing something that was meant to sell, that's not me. But they were selling, and I was doing what I really was, it was my identity, so I thought, I can live with that. But, you know, I might have evolved out of that a little sooner if they wouldn't have been selling. And so it probably extended the life of that series beyond what its natural life would've been, just because they were selling and money, money talks, you know. Everybody can use money. So in some ways, I'm kinda glad they stopped selling because in some ways, it kind of allowed me to sort of spread my wings creatively a lot. It made it a lot easier to spread my wings creatively. [pause]

Lillie:

What college did you go to? Where did you meet Denise?

Weidner:

I met Denise when I was in graduate school at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. She was still an undergraduate school even though we were in the same age. But she took longer to get through graduate school — it took her like seven or eight years or something, to get through graduate school, whereas I got through on like your normal 4 years. So we were the same age, actually she's like a little bit older than me, six months older, but I met her when I was in graduate school, and she was an undergraduate student in art... actually, she was doing printmaking at the time and I was a painter, and that's where I met her, and, you know, the rest is history.

Lillie:

Have you always been able to pair up in your teaching jobs? Because that seems interesting, I've never heard of that before, like the husband wife art team.

Weidner:

Yeah, yeah yeah. It's really not the best idea, to tell you the truth, because you see enough of each other when you're at home, and so you also see each other when you're at work. And we must have a pretty good relationship, because we're still together after all these years, even though for a lot of people you see too much of your spouse. But, this wall didn't use to be here. [knocks on wall behind his chair] It just got put up a year ago. This used to be one big office, the other side's about the same size as this side, and we were seeing way too much of each other and distracting each other a lot, so this wall got put up. Also, the other reason wasn't just for that reason. But, this used to be able to get through that door, and you could get through our office to the other studio, art studio on the other side, and as our enrollment increased with students, our office just became this pathway, hallway, and you couldn't get anything done. And sometimes you need some quiet moments where nobody's gonna bother ya. We were bothering each other, the students were bothering us cuz they were just using that as a hallway, and, so we put up a wall. But um, yeah, I guess it's kind of unique. It was nice at first because it allowed us to both get our artwork done. When you teach full-time, that's a huge chunk of time, and so then to try and do artwork on a year-round basis, which was really important to us and still is, becomes next to impossible. Now, we still get our artwork done on a year-round basis, but now that we're both either full time or more than full time, basically I only paint on the weekends now. Okay, cuz I just don't have any time during the week. I teach guitar lessons on Monday and Wednesdays evening, and I actually teach here on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, you know, an evening class, in addition to teaching all day long Monday through Friday, all day long. You know, I can — I have a full schedule. You know, where it's so... so yeah, when I paint it's on the weekends. I don't have any time during the week to paint. And it didn't used to be true. When we first started sharing our job, we were able to you know, paint during the week too. But things evolved and changed, and the art department grew, and you know, stuff happens.

Lillie:

Sounds like so much work. Do you ever get, like, tired, like too tired even to paint on the weekends? Or is painting more like a relaxing thing for you-

Weidner:

I wouldn't exactly call it relaxing. It is relaxing in the one sense, but the reason why I'm kinda jumping in there is because painting is hard. So anybody that just thinks painting is just relaxing is, well, I mean I really love to do it, but it's just plain hard. So to call it relaxing is like as if it's — and I don't mean to criticize you — but it's as if to suggest that, you know, it's just something to do to relax yourself, or as if it's therapeutic. Well, it can be therapeutic and it can be relaxing, but if you're really trying to grow in your artwork, trying to really expand and grow, it can also just be, um... [pause] it can really hard, and hard on you too, as an artist, you know, cuz you're constantly pushing yourself and, um, I wouldn't want it any other way, I wouldn't want it to just feel relaxing. Mostly I probably do it though just to, I like to keep busy, you know, I like to be a productive person. I mean, what else am I gonna do? You know. I mean, well, in my case, the other thing I would do is play music, but I mean, other than that, I'm... what are you gonna do with your life? How are you gonna remember yourself when you die? As a teacher? Well, yeah, that's important, but that's been done before, a lot. But being an artist, well that's a little more special, don't you think? You know, I'm proud of the fact that I'm a working artist, that I haven't given it up. And that I'm gonna keep on doing it, you know. Hopefully I'll still be able to paint. I mean, hopefully I'll be able to retire someday and just go back to painting full time with whatever time I have left after I retire. [loudly, into the speaker:] but Lakeland doesn't pay me enough so I'm never gonna be able to retire! You hear that?

Lillie:

Well, you've been here for a long time, so like, what kind of changes have you seen, the bigger changes that have come across on campus?

Weidner:

Well the school has grown a lot. When we first got here it was probably around, enrollment was probably around 400, so it's more than doubled. So it's close to a thousand now. The whole connection with the Japanese campus, when we first got here, that was nearly non-existent. As you can see, if you look across campus, there's a lot of Japanese students here. And a lot of em are art majors. And we've seen that evolve too. We've had some points in the art department where enrollment in art was pretty low, but now it's way up and that includes just your common, and by common I mean your more typical people that are just from somewhere in Wisconsin, not from Japan or someplace, are art majors, both male and female art majors. The art department has grown tremendously, I've seen a lot of buildings go up around campus that didn't use to be here. That was never here — what are you, a freshman?

Lillie:

I'm a sophomore.

Weidner:

Sophomore? You know, the Laun center over there, that was never there, you know, a few years back that wasn't there. Some renovations to some other buildings, that huge expansion to the gymnasium, the Wehr center, it used to be about half the size it is now, so. And faculty have increased in numbers. The one thing that hasn't changed is, is that is, the school, still, where it puts all its money. It puts its money into buildings, it puts its money into [pause] mostly into buildings. It'd be nice if it, if it, um...the cost of living, raises for faculty, doesn't even match, I mean, the raises for faculty from year to year doesn't even match the cost of living increases. So each year, even though you get a little raise, usually you do, of about 3 percent, the cost of living has gone up more than that. And then the insurance goes up and that kind of thing, and that's pretty disheartening, especially since, you know, I mean things have grown tremendously in the art department. But you're probably asking campus-wide. What else have I seen? I've seen a whole lot of people that were my friends, that were my faculty members but we were also friends socially, I've seen 'em leave, just leave, leave, leave. You know they've taken jobs at other places, to the point where, you, you don't even want to bother anymore trying to make friends, social friends, people that you do stuff with like on the weekends and so forth with faculty members because maybe they're just gonna leave. So why bother, you know it's too... and I'm too busy anyway, I mean like having friends, who doesn't but, if you're spending time with friends you're spending less time with your artwork, and I've gotten so little time to do my artwork now that it's one of the sacrifices you make. It's tough being an artist here. You have to give up friendship and stuff. Unless you're rich, and you're really wealthy, and you don't have to work for a living.

Lillie:

Sounds like you... when you mentioned teachers leaving, is there someone in particular that you were really close to, that you were friends with-

Weidner:

Well, John Thorndike was a good friend, he taught English, Ted Palton was a good friend, he taught writing... you know, there's been others that don't as quickly come to mind. But those are two pretty good friends and when they left, I... and the other thing is, newer faculty that come in tend to be younger faculty and so there's a bigger gap. And the ones that are already here, well if you were to become friends with them it would've already happened. So... I dunno. It's kinda disappointing really. But I, uh, I have friends in the art community. The one thing — this isn't at Lakeland — but the one thing that's really been improving recently in the art community in Sheboygan is it's getting more organized. And I'm not talking about John Michael Kohler, that's always been there, and it's always been nice sort of hub of the art community. But the problem with the John Michael Kohler is that they're interested in outside artists, not in the local community much at all, except for their, local community of artists, except for their tri-annual exhibition, that's where they throw a bone to all of us local artists, you know, we can enter something and maybe get it into their tri-annual, their competitive tri-annual art exhibition. Aside from that though, it just recently in the last year or so, there's been this sort of an organization that's called the Sheboygan Visual Artists, and this guy Frank Juarez has done a great job of making the art community much more aware of itself and who we are. And so we sort of get together and — one of the things that's not really a part of that has been linked up with that is a lot of local artists get together and they draw the figure. Share the cost of a model and draw the figure. But other things have happened recently, like artwork, that's been organized, that artwork is in, um, in local restaurants and so forth around town. And that's not the same as a gallery, which is much more likely to sell your artwork than a restaurant, but it's still really nice, that he's getting more organized. You feel like, we feel like, an artist often feels like they're pretty isolated, and the only kinda person they can relate to easily is other artists, which tends to kinda be true, for a lot of us. And so this makes you realize who the other artists are. I mean, you don't even know if they're out there, and this makes you realize who they are and you can sit down and easily have a conversation with them where they don't offend you and you don't offend them and you don't get bored either because you're talking about similar interests which is related to art as opposed to if I were to sit down with, let's say a few faculty on campus and they were to start talking about, oh I dunno, business or something, first of all, I wouldn't know anything about it, secondly I'd be bored even if I did know something about it, and we'd probably be on the opposite ends of things in terms of like, the politics of it, and...so.

Lillie:

Do you think that, like, the art community in Sheboygan has been growing and if it has, does that have anything to do with Lakeland's influence, or are we more closed …?

Weidner:

I wouldn't say that this particular thing has anything to do with Lakeland's influence, but Lakeland is happy to link itself up with this growing art community. There's a website, Sheboygan Visual Artists, and Lakeland, even some of our students are become involved with it, our art majors, one of them, the guy that just shut the door for me a little while ago, he, he's doing an internship where he's doing some of the graphic arts, the computer graphic arts, for the Sheboygan Visual Artists, like this gallery night that, well it wasn't gallery night, what did they call it? It's like gallery night, but many restaurants in town that all in the same time were, it was like a gallery crawl where you go from restaurant to restaurant and you see what artwork is now being displayed in these different places. Well anyway, he did the brochure for it so our students are getting involved in it, one of our students is actually on the website showing one of her pieces of artwork, so it's really helped you to become aware of what's going on in the community in terms of art, so it's been real nice.

Lillie:

That's cool. So, I knew you grew up in a time where this country was going through all kinds of …

Weidner: Stuff?

Lillie:

Yeah, just stuff, just all kinds of different changes and things. Was there a momentous point in your life or personal history where you decided art over something else?

Weidner:

Yeah, there was. It doesn't have anything to do with what you just said. When I tried out for the baseball team in high school and I got cut, the first cut, I decided okay, I'm gonna be an artist, like that. Seriously. Because, you know, I had realized I had this talent for art and people had recognized it and they told me, you are really good, even when I was in elementary school, and I said well okay that's great, I had this talent in art and I liked to do artwork, but it wasn't like it was the only thing I did or anything, I was just like any normal kid, you know I had other interests and I loved baseball and I loved to play ball and, you know, do some other things too. But when that happened, it kinda you know, I started to realize oh, okay, well who am I? And I started to realize I had this strength, my greatest strength. I mean, I always got decent grades as a student, you know, not straight A's by any means, but mostly A's and B's. And I realized that I always got really good grades in art, and not only did I get good grades but people always said wow, you're really good at art, but they never said wow, you're really good at math, or wow, you're really good at history, or wow, you're really good at writing — although I kinda did get a, a little boost in writing once I was in college. So I realized that's probably who I, that's I probably should go with my strengths, cuz it's not baseball. And that's, and so in high school then, I took art all four years in high school and, which really didn't amount to much, but it's good that I did it. And said well, okay, and I decided to think about college and I thought, well, I might as well major in art, that's what I'm best at. Might as well go with my strengths. [pause] did I answer that question or did I waver off too far?

Lillie:

No, it was great, that was a good answer. I was a little surprised.

Weidner:

What did you ask, though? You asked when I had my big moment of deciding?

Lillie:

Yeah.

Weidner:

Well, you know, before that there was a few times when I just got recognized by some elementary school teacher who wasn't an art teacher at all, but they were just recognized. One big thing that happened to me was when I was in like, what grade was it? I think it was 5th grade. I did some drawing in class and the teacher saw it and she thought it was so good she showed it to the 8th grade teacher, and that's where elementary school ends, you know, 8th grade, and that's when I realized wow, she showed my drawing to the 8th grade teacher, I must be good at art. And you know, my classmates were always telling me, you're the best in the whole class, Bill, you're the best, you know, at art. And nobody was saying that about anything else about me. I wasn't the best basketball player or anything else, you know, so, so that was a big moment, and there were a few other things that probably happened somewhere along the way, but it doesn't sound all that... it wasn't so much at first, it's changed since then, it wasn't so much at first I felt like, okay, this is definitely who I am, it was more of a question of, well, who I wasn't, and what was left. And I had this talent at art and I thought, yeah, I'm gonna go with it. And then you start to get into it and you start to really love it and you start really take it seriously, beyond just a little bit of recognition from some friends, wow you're really good, you stop caring. You don't even care what people say or think anymore, you just do it because you wanna do it. And then you start doing artwork that they don't like anymore and that becomes confusing cuz your artwork becomes so personal that a lot of people either don't understand it or don't like it or... [pause] but that's the typical life of an artist, it finally evolved to a point where, get to a point where their audience becomes smaller. Not true with all artists, that's not true with all artists, some... but, most modern artists, you know, they become kinda focused on uh, a certain identity that... that not everybody can relate to. [pause] Just like with Karl Elder, you know, some people will really like his poetry, and other people, well, won't. [pause]

Lillie:

I'm one of the ones that really likes it.

Weidner:

Yeah, I think I like his poetry and I like Karl, he's a good guy. I love the way he gets so upset at faculty meetings. Somebody will say something and he'll just get so upset, he's just... I don't know how he keeps his head on straight though. He lets things bother him so much, the politics of Lakeland college, he lets it bother him so much that I would think it would mess up his ability to be a good poet. But he seems to know how to, it doesn't seem to mess up his ability to be a good poet. I've told him though, I says Karl, let it go, you can't do anything about it anyway, don't worry about it, it's the politics of Lakeland, you know? You're not gonna win, let it go, concentrate on your poetry. He'll just say something like: [in Karl's voice] "I can't."

Lillie:

[laugh] That was a perfect impersonation!

Weidner:

"I can't." [Laughs] Yeah, that's Karl Elder.

Lillie:

That was amazing.

Weidner:

So we have a lot in common in that sense, you know, we, we both share that, and I'm able to sit down and talk to Karl, we don't sit down that much anymore, but we're able to sit down and, he being an artist and me being a poet, we understand each other's temperament and how we look at life. We look at so many situations in life, life experiences, and let that feed into our art, either directly or indirectly. And that's why it worries me when he lets things bother him so much, that it would , things bother me a lot too, but it's even worse for him, it just seems to bother him more, he can't shrug it off or laugh it off, he wants to challenge it, something political happens on campus and he just thinks, you know, and I mean that's what I was talking about right when this thing started here, you know, he was so upset when he found out the other day that when you do interviews you have to document it and take notes and sign waivers and when a person wants you to not say something it has to be in writing and blah-blah-blah, and he was so upset with all that, and I just wanted to say to him, Karl, just ignore it, just they can say what they want and just don't do it, you know, but...

Lillie:

Karl is probably one of the very few people that would get away with it every time, too.

Weidner:

Yeah, so. You know, nobody's gonna mess with him!

Lillie:

Exactly!

Weidner:

You know, he's, he gets away with smoking in his office, and, you know there's not supposed to be any smoking and — I don't smoke, it's a bad habit — you know, Karl, he's gonna do what he wants to do.

Lillie:

It's one of his signature things.

Weidner:

Yeah. Yeah, it is.

Lillie:

You said you're always worried that Karl's gonna get so upset that it's gonna interfere with his writing. Do the politics at Lakeland ever interfere with your art, your painting and things like that?

Weidner:

Usually I can separate the two. But if some really — and not let it bother me — but if some really heavy issue is going on, you know, I'll take it home with me, which is where I paint now. But some, what makes it worse is sometimes my wife will take some issue home with her, and since we both work at the same place I can't listen to all that objectively to what she has to say because I'm influenced by it too, and so yeah, it sometimes gets in the way. But for the most part, I'm usually pretty good about once I step in the studio, I forget about all this other stuff and I just become an artist and just that that hat off of being a teacher and a politician on campus and all that stuff and I just become an artist. I'm pretty good at that, it's really not that hard to do.

Lillie:

Besides issues with not getting paid enough, what would be something that you might take home with you that has really bothered you about the campus or the politics here?

Weidner:

Hmm...[pause] uh, things like... [pause] certain people in certain positions that aren't really qualified for that position, you know, and I don't want to get too specific, this is where I do have to shy away from, or that are really bad at their job, that can be kinda maddening. Or you end up doing not only your job but also their job because they're so incompetent that they can't do it, which is just plain unfair. And if they get hired back to that same position every year, you know, things like that, or watching, watching money go in certain directions — actually, in recent, I have to admit, in recent years the college has gotten so much better about having money come towards the art department. As our enrollment increased, they've been so supportive of that, that new Mac lab down the hall, you know that cost a bundle. And so actually things have been pretty sweet in recent years. They haven't increased our pay but they certainly have thrown a lot more money than they used to, they've thrown a whole lot more money at the art department and supported it a whole lot more. But yeah, you know, you see the Wehr center get expanded, you see dormitories go up, but we could definitely use a third, at least, a third studio for the art majors. We're on top of each other. We're crowded, we're crowded. That's why you see —

Lillie:

Yeah, I was noticing in there how many people have their easels set up.

Weidner:

That's crowded. And that's half of the studio, and this other half four other classes over there, and it's just not enough space. So, things like that, yeah.

Lillie:

Over the years has the quality of students changed at all, or is it about the same?

Weidner:

It kind of goes in cycles. In art, it's generally, definitely gone up, but even as the general trend has gone up, there's still like ups and downs along the way. Like for instance, the, some of the exhibits of the seniors from this year are frankly not, not all of them, but frankly in general not as strong as maybe a couple years ago, but that just happens, you know, and probably next year we'll have a really strong year again. And then there is gonna be, the last exhibit this year of senior art majors will probably prove to be a stronger one again. So yeah, it just kinda goes in cycles. But generally up, I would say. What I haven't noticed though is that, in the academics across Lakeland in general, I haven't seen [pause] this is not anything against Karl Elder, but people that come to college; it shocks me sometimes, their lack of their ability to write. I'm amazed. Even if they enter college that way, I see them as a senior and they still can't write. And I'm not talking about great writing skills, I'm talking about basic writing skills. And I'm thinking, so what's happening here? How come in four years they're not learning how to write? Why do they have to take all of these course that emphasize writing if they're still not gonna learn how to write in four years after that? So yeah, that, that kinda really, you know, I don't get it. How come they're not learning somewhere along the way, how to write? All these classes like core classes, Core I, Core II, Core III, and then, well, where are they learning how to write? You know. It's kinda weird that way. I'd say in general though, even in that sense, even in the college at large, I think the quality of students is going up. I think that just almost naturally happens when a college grows in size it starts to attract more students and it starts to attract students of a higher caliber as well, in general. So I think it's getting better.

Lillie:

That's great. My head's so full of your picture of Lakeland now. It's really nice.

Weidner:

Yeah I hope I didn't sound too negative, I tend to sound negative when I talk about things like that. Generally though, things have been really good. We're just, Denise and I are both really happy with the way the art department has grown. We have a new problem now, we don't have enough space. But that's a really good problem to have, not enough space, you know. And the other thing that people just don't understand about art is you can make a living at art. The reason why a whole lot of students shy away from art as a major is they hear all these influences from relatives and from peers and other family members saying what are you gonna do with a degree in art? Well, with graphic art, you can make a good solid living. Now I'll be the first to admit, even though, I'm a studio artist, I'm a painter, I'm not a graphic artist, graphic art is commercial art. It's not real art. First of all, it's not real art. It uses art skills to sell products. But you can make a living at, a good living at. And our art majors, once they become art majors, they realize that that's true. It's a little bit more difficult to get rid of that old-fashioned notion that, with a major it art, what are you gonna do with it in the general public out there. But we know, we're graduating people that are getting jobs, you know, good jobs. So we're not, you know, So if you're hearing from people, sense you're expressing some interest in being an art major, that it's a mistake, it's not. Even if you decide to be mostly a studio person, well, you won't make a living with that, trust me. Cuz we were doing really well, and it took one little thing — well, not one little thing, 9/11 — and that crushed it, okay? So you need a salary job. You need a salary job where it's gonna be there no matter what happens. And what I tell a lot of art majors is, they end up double-majoring — well, not double-majoring, because it's really only one major, but they end up doing both emphases, the graphic art emphasis and the studio emphasis because they don't just like to sit at the computer and just do graphic art. They like to also do stuff that's personal, that's just like, like a poem is personal. You write a short story, that's personal. You know? And they like to express themselves in a more personal way. And you can express yourself with graphic art, with commercial art, but you're selling a product. So, that's what you're really doing, you're helping to sell a product. So it's not art, it uses art skills, so it's certainly not pure art, and it never will be fine art. Some will call it art, but it's not. But that's okay, because everybody has to make a living, everybody has have money, and you have to have money. So, you gotta figure out how you gotta do it. I almost, when I was a junior, I almost went into commercial art, and then I just didn't because I was naive enough to believe that, well, I dunno, there's a lot of factors involved, but one of them was that, I was just proud enough that I was even going to college, you know, I was a first generation college. You hear so much that Lakeland College students. Well there you go. The fact that I was just getting a degree I thought, wasn't that enough? And now you're gonna tell me what I have to get a degree in, too? I'm really glad that I was stubborn enough to stay in art. It would've been easier, I mean, there could've been other degrees I could've gotten that would've taken me right into the job market, but that's not who I was. So, yeah. I mean, so you don't eat as well and you don't live in this big of a house, you don't go on as many vacations. You don't buy as nice cars, all that. You do okay. You end up, you do okay, and you don't care about all that stuff anyway, you care about art. Making art. All that other stuff, it's just a distraction anyway. All that other stuff, it's just time away from art. So you just don't really care, you know? How're we doing here, anyway?

Lillie:

You gave me so much more than I was hoping for, thank you so much.

 

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