Robert Alston Remembered

Exhibition Essay

Bob Alston was the Chair of the Art Department when I started teaching here at SOU in 1987. He was my mentor, and a trusting one at that. I made many mistakes as a young inexperienced artist/ teacher, and Bob was never discouraging. He alternated between smiles, raised eyebrows and long melodic sighs as we resolved whatever my inexperience required we resolve. He offered wisdom in such a casual manner, that I usually didn’t recognize it as guidance until I was passing it on as a mentor myself, years later.

I have called upon his example a million times in my career, and wouldn’t have survived three terms as Department Chair without visions of his fluffy white hair and memories of his long sighs floating around in the back of my mind, reminding me that the job could in fact be done with dignity, integrity and a smile.

While he was Chair, he maintained certain traditions in a spirit that we should reconsider reviving. “Hunter College” at Gold Beach, was such a tradition. This was a once a year weekend at his cabin on the coast, hosted by Bob and MaryAnn, and attended by almost all the art faculty. Other traditions were- a pancake breakfast/ campout at Hyatt Lake, and our Annual Art Department picnic at Emigrant Lake during Spring Term, with hotdogs, barbeque, cake, drinks, and softball and swimming, always looked forward to by students and faculty.

When the Art Department was a collection of studios scattered across the campus in surplus spaces, Bob sustained a spirit of community for artists and students, without a physical place. He was key to resolving that lack of a physical place. He and Mary Ann were instrumental in the creation of the Schneider Museum of Art, even convincing the administration that it needed a professional director and couldn’t run it with work-study students. In 2000, when the Center for the Visual Arts was finally a reality, no one needed to be reminded that Bob had been a major force in keeping alive the vision of a state of the arts facility over the decades it took to finally bring it to reality. Bob wasn’t alone in building the Art Department, but he was certainly pivotal at the major junctures.

Whenever I think of Bob, I think of Sam Frank’s Disco. At some gathering, Bob told a horrendously long, convoluted, and epic story about an angel who was late for an appointment with God after having been allowed to visit San Francisco for a weekend of partying. I never could remember the story, only Bob’s mischievous smile as he finally delivered the punch line from the angel; “Sorry God, I left my harp, in Sam Franks Disco”.

– Cody Bustamante
Art Department Chair / Professor

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