Horizons only,no lines it said in the brochure that we would be doing. We wanted to have full say about how everything was done. In the end, we probably did quite a lot of what the faculty had planned. But we wanted to munch it around a little bit. DG: Do you remember what issues you were particularly concerned about? FP: One of the issues that I was really concerned about was the student advising system; who would do it and how it would get done. Some of us wanted everyone to be advisors to everybody else. Others didn’t want to advise, didn’t like to do it, or weren’t very good at it. The students, the staff, the teachers. You see? That was the whole point of this college.
DG: That’s a wonderful description of human ecology…. And after classes, what did you do after hours?
A tribute to JoAnne Carpenter, faculty member in art and art history from 1973 to 2008: COA’s first faculty retiree.
FP: Hmmm. Well, there was not much happening downtown. There were maybe two bars open, if that. In the winter there was nothing to do except what was on campus. DG: What attracted you to COA? FP: If it had just been an inclusive, communitycentered school, I would not have been interested. It was that strong interest in the environment and the world, the ecology and natural history and the sanctity of life on the planet and being responsible for that and ~ Fran Pollitt ’77 getting out of the old way of thinking about being external to the natural world and putting ourselves in—
“And that’s of course what human ecology is at its center— that love of our entire world.”
DG: So you knew what you wanted and— FP: I didn’t necessarily know what I wanted, but I wasn’t shy to talk about it. But then, you had a lot of people at the college who were shy, or who didn’t know how to ask, or who were struggling along with all their different issues, whatever they were. DG: That’s interesting, because every single one of these students had to be taking a risk. Right? FP: We were really like any other kind of student body, but willing to take on something a little different. I would say we had a lot of heart. And that’s of course what human ecology is at its center—that love of our entire world. You realize you’re not just a person walking through it but you have responsibility for it.
JoAnne Carpenter in front of a painting she was working on at a time when COA was much smaller and the pool table sat in Take-A-Break. Photo by Randy Ury.
DG: And is that something that you talked about? FP: Oh, yes. We were avid. We were wild about it—and then we would tire ourselves out and go to the movies. One of the hard things was how strong the force was for peer conformation. You had to wear hiking boots, jeans and a flannel shirt. Most of our meals were organic, healthy— And one of the great things was that Cathy Johnson ’74 led us in madrigal singing. Cathy had the capacity to help us really have a great time singing. Our graduation was filled with music, because we all knew how to sing together. Fran Pollitt’s book, Historic Photos of Maine has just been published by Turner Publishing.
n the early COA years, there was a sense that the earth was in a dreadful emergency and that art was a frill or pastime that had little relevance to the problem or the solution. So for more than a decade, there was no artist or art historian on the full-time faculty. Year by year, however, working her way from visitor to adjunct to part-time and finally to full-time, having to prove herself and her subject at every step, JoAnne Carpenter established the living centrality of art to the human ecology curriculum. Her story is central to the story of art at COA. Her unsurpassed intellectual range—from Minoan antiquity to the latest Whitney biennial—brought to a remote Maine island the full spectacle of visual culture. JoAnne also embodied the essential human ecology doctrine that theory and knowledge had to be realized in the world.
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Though fully contemporary, her elegant paintings are layered with reference both to Renaissance aesthetics and her own deep-rooted connection, through her Mediterranean background, to the classical world. I must say personally that some of the high points of my own time at COA came from teamteaching with JoAnne, from Maine Coast History and Architecture to The Fifties, to the many iterations of Turn of the Century—thirty-five years of teaching collaboration. I would just add to all these student tributes a colleague’s deep respect for JoAnne’s endless self-generating energy, her constant questioning, her passionate intensity across a staggering range of subject matter, her insistence on an all-out integrity of approach, and her humility before the words, images, ideas and reality of the world we share. ~Bill Carpenter
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