The Arts

Art professor reflects on his illustrious ride

» Your eyes are drawn in a number of directions before you reach the desk on the north end of Visual Arts Professor Mike Sleadd’s office in Brown Hall.

His artwork and that of others adorn the walls, with a backstory to match the creativity of each piece.

“I have tried to instill in my students to really think and to play with art and to let it be a conveyance for your imagination,” Sleadd says. “Let it take you on a ride and lead you in some ways. And then use it as a way of expressing yourself, your ideals and ideas.”

At the end of the 2022-23 academic year, Sleadd finished a ride of his own, closing his illustrious career at Columbia College after imparting his expertise to generations of emerging artists. Nearly 35 years after he began teaching at the college alongside a Mount Rushmore-esque team of Art faculty members, the engaging educator is retiring from the classroom.

Sleadd remembers the mentors he learned from upon his arrival at the college, including Sidney Larson, Tom Watson, Ed Collings, Ben Cameron and Richard Baumann. He describes himself as “one of the last holdouts” from that esteemed era of faculty members.

After those colleagues concluded their careers, Sleadd says he was proud to have a hand in hiring the people leading the department now and into the future.

“There is just an amazing group of people,” Sleadd says of the current faculty. “It’s a very diverse group. People with different approaches to art, but a very tight group. They are just wonderful artists.”

Sleadd came to Columbia College in the late 1980s as a visiting instructor teaching Graphic Design classes. Soon he began working toward his Master of Fine Arts at the University of Missouri so he could improve his career trajectory within academia, completing that degree after the encouragement of Mary Miller, the dean he worked under at the time.

At one point during his tenure, Sleadd recalls teaching the most courses of any professor at the college, with that number influenced by stacked classes such as Graphic Design 1, 2 and 3. He eventually took over instructing the Advanced Drawing and Printmaking classes, and developed a graphic design course for Typography.

“What a great gig it’s been,” Sleadd says. “To be able to spend your life doing what you love and teach it is really wonderful.”

Sleadd proudly follows the achievements of graduates as they advance their lives, with former pupils becoming professors like him or even creating at places such as Cartoon Network.

“You’re proud of students that you’ve had contact with in their lives and touched them in some way,” Sleadd says. “Whenever you teach, you continue to learn. Of course, you have to stay steps ahead, but your students challenge you and make you look at what you’re doing. They make you think about how to communicate what you want to teach them.”

He doesn’t intend to stop making art, and he won’t be going far this next year as his creative juices continue to flow. Sleadd will be the department’s first artist-in-residence, moving from his upstairs office to a studio downstairs in the same building.

He will create in that space at a more leisurely schedule and make himself available for open studio sessions with students. Even in his retirement, he will not be a stranger around campus. “No stranger than I already am,” Sleadd says with a smile. –KG