Bob Hansman
runs nationially recognized City Faces program
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Bob Hansman runs nationially recognized City Faces program |
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Perseverance
personified Having conquered cancer, Bob Hansman brings art education to at-risk kids By Liam Otten
But this is no trendy loft or hi-tech commercial outfit. Since 1993, Hansman -- associate professor and artist-in-residence in the School of Architecture -- has run City Faces, a small but nationally recognized arts education program based in St. Louis' Clinton-Peabody housing project. "The kids learn about problem solving, about delayed gratification, about breaking big problems into small component parts -- all that metaphorical stuff," Hansman explained. "Drawing is a kind of a vehicle that gives us a chance to talk, a chance to shape each other's lives." Still, the projects are a hard place to grow up and, in close to a decade of mentoring, Hansman has witnessed too many tragedies. In 1996, 17-year-old Jermaine Roberts, another City Faces mainstay, died of complications from sickle cell anemia. In 2000, graffiti artist Jonah Anderson, whom Hansman befriended through the annual Paint Louis festival, was beaten into a coma. "This summer started off with a kid getting killed, and then another one got killed and two got shot," Hansman said, voice filled with emotion. "I think a lot of programs come in and out fast enough that they get an artificial sense of success, but with time it's more humbling. You really get to see what you're up against, all these forces that act on the kids when you're not around." But if Hansman knows one thing, it's perseverance. Born and raised in Affton, Mo., Hansman frequently was bedridden as a child and remembers his own teachers stopping by the house to drop off assignments. He credits his mother, who died of breast cancer when he was 12, with nurturing his artistic abilities. "My mom was one of those people who make art out of daily life," Hansman recalled. "Just wrapping presents, we'd build things, sculpt things on them -- the wrapping would be better than the presents." In 1965, Hansman arrived at the University of Kansas, majoring in painting and drawing ("an era of masking tape and spray paint," he recollected) with concentrations in English and religious studies; he even began course work toward a teaching certificate. Yet, nagged by feelings of ill health, he briefly stopped attending classes, though he did complete his bachelor's degree in 1970. Those ill feelings intensified after graduation, just as Hansman was resettling in Normal, Ill. Long hours in the University of Illinois medical library suggested malignant melanoma. Sadly, doctors confirmed the self-diagnosis and, worse yet, discovered that the cancer had metastasized throughout his lymphatic system. Ironically, one of the world's top treatment programs was back at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City. "'I'm going home to die,'" Hansman remembers thinking. To the amazement of almost everyone, he didn't, and even today routine physicals will generate comments from surprised physicians. "They're like, 'How are you here?' Hansman said. "Statistically, I hardly exist." Yet despite rounds of surgery that left him unable to lift his arms, Hansman continued making art. "I could still move my hands, so I did these little stipple-drawings," with pin-prick-sized dots of ink, he said. "It was like an obsession." (Ultimately Hansman completed a pair of artists' books in the style: RATZO, dedicated to his lost cat, and Edward, for a disabled child.) In 1974, finally well enough for outpatient therapy, Hansman returned to the St. Louis area and confronted a new dilemma: finding a job. In those days, "employers could still ask about your health history," he recalled, grimacing. "I'd go in, fill out an application and never get called back." After months of frustration, Hansman interviewed for a position at Unique Art Glass, a designer and manufacturer of stained-glass windows. Afterward, standing to shake hands, he realized that the owner was a polio survivor. "I went home and I just. . . I wrote a three-page letter saying, 'You of all people should know that you can have physical disabilities and still be a functioning human being and, dammit, hire me!' Hansman recounted. "A couple of days later, I got a phone call and he goes, 'Got your letter. Can you be here at noon?'" Over the next 11 years, Hansman went from sweeping floors to heading the art department -- major projects included the Missouri Baptist Hospital Chapel and the Anheuser-Busch Tourist Center -- and he still maintains a busy free-lance practice. He also began building a substantial graphic-design portfolio, including logos for Vintage Vinyl, Riverport Amphitheater and the St. Louis Black Repertory Company. But in 1985, life took another turn when a close friend committed suicide. Hansman was devastated and did not enter the studio for months. Then, exactly one year later, he started working again. With a vengeance. "It was like, 'round the clock," he recalls. "I had paper ringing the bed, in the bathroom, everywhere. I drew constantly, and it went on for 18 months."
In one example, a powerfully built yet headless nude stands silhouetted before a night landscape, one hand clutching a stuffed rabbit, the other a dagger. Airplanes fall in the distance, resembling tiny crucifixes, while streams of handwritten working titles provide journal-like intimacy. Notices were strong, but Hansman -- drained and needing a change -- packed his bags for Seattle, where he planned to open a stained-glass shop and perhaps return to school. He never got there. At the behest of Jim Harris, professor and then-associate dean of architecture (and a reviewer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch), Leslie Lasky, now professor emeritus, offered Hansman a job teaching drawing and basic design. "It was a funny conversation," Hansman recalled. "Leslie asked me where I was going to be in a year and I said Seattle, and he said, 'No, you'll be at Washington University.' And I said, 'I can't afford Washington University.'" To which Lasky responded, "I don't mean as a student, I mean as a teacher!" Hansman was overwhelmed by the poetic symmetry: His lost friend had trained as an architect and worked at the Campus Store in Mallinckrodt Student Center. "Not only did this fulfill my long-lost dream of being a teacher, it did so through the drawings I'd done for (him), at the university where he worked, and at the architecture school, which was (his) love," Hansman explained, growing subdued. "I understood I'd been given a great gift and that I'd better handle it right." By any standard, he has. Granted tenure last spring, Hansman received the Student Union Professor of the Year Award for Architecture in 1998-99; the Emerson Electric Excellence in Teaching Award in 2000; and a Founders Day Distinguished Faculty Award in 2001. He has co-taught courses through the George Warren Brown School of Social Work's Urban Family and Community Development Program; served as faculty sponsor for the local chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students; and directed architecture's Hewlett Program, a kind of crash-course for freshmen on the relationship between building and community. "Bob is a person of great talents and great conscience," said architecture Dean Cynthia Weese. "Students arrive believing that architecture is simply about designing wonderful individual buildings for people who can afford them. Bob introduces the complexities and the ethical dimensions of architecture in the total environment." Hansman's own commitment to community dates back to college. In 1970, as a campus civil rights and anti-war activist, he was attacked by members of the Ku Klux Klan. The morning he filed charges, his lawyer's office was pipe-bombed. In 1992, Hansman was giving informal drawing lessons to kids in his neighborhood when Christine Ivich, of the St. Louis Artists' Coalition, arranged for him to teach a pair of summer workshops. A year later, City Faces was launched with support from the Center of Contemporary Art and the Guardian Angel Settlement Association. The program has since earned citations from the White House, the Missouri House of Representatives and Colin Powell's America's Promise campaign, among others. Hansman's greatest reward, though, is symbolized by the "Hansman Family" T-shirt that enjoys pride of place in his Givens Hall office. The shirt is a Father's Day present from Jovan Hansman, an early City Faces member and the artist's recently adopted son. "We really connected," Hansman said simply. "Sometimes we're father and son, sometimes we're student and teacher, sometimes we're friends -- I think any parent understands that. "I don't even think of this as a program anymore -- it's my life," he mused. "It's just trying to make the deepest and best impression you can, knowing that there's going to be some failure. You don't do this for success; you almost have to do it for stubbornness. "Most of the really wonderful things in my life have grown out of great tragedy," Hansman added. "No matter how awful something is, a part of me is thinking, 'What good will come from it?' But you can't figure it out in advance. "A door opens, and you walk through it or you don't." |
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