Panel text reads:
At Black Mountain College
Charles Olson drafted Ingeborg Lauterstein, now living in Rockport, into his class at the innovative Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Lauterstein had traveled to the college from Austria in order to pursue her interest in painting. In part due to Olson’s influence, she focused on writing, and has published two critically acclaimed novels.
What does not change is the will to change. –Charles Olson “The Kingfishers”
INGEBORG LAUTERSTEIN
How did I get from war-torn, occupied Vienna to Black Mountain College in North Carolina, USA? By change, of course. Taking a chance, following that yellow brick road to my Emerald City, Black Mountain and Charles Olson, the wizard. I was in my study, standing at my easel working on my "Wise and Foolish Virgins" painting when the door opened and there he was, his head almost touched the ceiling. He had an Easter-egg face with a moustache and glasses. His eyes often looked startled–in empathy–when he startled us. He enjoyed being unexpected; I knew that from the beginning.
This was his first day as our English teacher. As soon as he arrived he had gone to the library to see what books students were taking out. So he came to ask why, why was I reading Sapho, Murasaki, Jane Austin, George Sand–all those women writers.
I wanted to be a painter, I said, but up to that point most of the great painters were men. As writers, however, women had been great from way back. I wanted to find out what women writers had to say, how they lived and how they felt. When Olson kept looking at my romantic, blue-green "Wise and Foolish Virgins," which defied Albers and the Bauhaus, I became uneasy. He came a step closer, "I want you in my class," he smiled, towering over me. Soon he would make me feel big, extraordinary: a writer.
Charles Olson had found his way to Black Mountain to replace Dahlberg, who had made a fool of himself, both as a man and as a teacher, before he fled. The school hired Olson because he was married and because students liked his big, showy lecture that questioned Shake-speare's identity. His salary as a part-time teacher and lecturer was $120 a week plus travel expenses. This gave him a chance to go on working on plays for the Verse and Dance Theater in Washington. Besides, he liked the idea of coming and going in the manner of Chinese University visiting lecturers.
I found my way to Black Mountain through a Life Magazine article with pictures of Bauhaus artists who had fled Germany and found freedom as artists and teachers at Black Mountain. The new college did not believe that students should have to memorize meaningless facts in order to pass exams. I hated memorizing and much admired the picture of barefoot Black Mountain College students perching like birds among rafters during a lecture. Art was considered most vital in preparation for life-long creative thinking. I told my father that Black Mountain was the right place for me!
Page 6 • North Shore Magazine • August 10, 1995
Ingeborg Lauterstein sketches the students in one of Charles Olson’s classes at Black Mountain College.
Cover Story
Playing it safe was never safe with Olson. He would turn his class into a play pen [sic] as big as the world, to throw at us Homer, the Bible, Shakespeare, Dante and Ezra Pound, as warnings against greedy spoilers lurking everywhere, rationalizing their misdeeds. He believed that strong, personal ideas would teach us to find the right words and the right voice in writing.
Black Mountain College remains the safest place I have ever known. It was far removed from political events, war, threat of invasion and more war. Students and faculty had constructed the study building, which shimmered by our lake as though it might drift away. Snapping turtles sunned themselves on rocks. I hiked through the North Carolina woods with old Professor Dehn, the German mathematician and philosopher who came from Harvard University to lecture to us. He showed me wild orchids I had never seen before, as well as snakes and a bear near a waterfall.
Playing it safe was never safe with Olson. He would turn his class into a play pen [sic] as big as the world, to throw at us Homer, the Bible, Shakespeare, Dante and Ezra Pound, as warnings against greedy spoilers lurking everywhere, rationalizing their misdeeds. He believed that strong, personal ideas would teach us to find the right words and the right voice in writing.
The painter De Kooning and his wife Elaine were there when I arrived. Merce Cunningham was leaving. Rotund Buck-minster Fuller came later in the rotund trailer with several thin disciples in his wake to dazzle us all with an instant dome.
Olson, who was a disciple of Ezra Pound, also had a need for an audience of followers. I could not be one of them because I had come away from a time when everyone had to be a follower. "The Cantos" remained hard for me to read, and Pound's racist attitude was hard to intellectualize since Black Mountain Col-lege, unlike other schools at that time, accepted students and teachers of any race and any religion. Not until the middle of the year did the wild, sweeping, often freely contradictory ideas in the Olson class suddenly began to complement the Albers' method of teaching basic skills.
By the time I slipped my first poem under Olson’s study door, I was so well accustomed to being anonymous in the Albers’ class that I did not put my name on it. When Olson read the poem in class, and made so much of it, I just slinked away. The poem is lost somewhere, but the form of an inner and outer poem, after all those years, became the form of my new novel “Sun on Ice.” Nothing important is ever lost.
A sketch of Charles Olson by Ingeborg Lauderstein while she attended Black Mountain College.
At Black Mountain College
Charles Olson drafted Ingeborg Lauterstein, now living in Rockport, into his class at the innovative Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Lauterstein had traveled to the college from Austria in order to pursue her interest in painting. In part due to Olson’s influence, she focused on writing, and has published two critically acclaimed novels.
What does not change is the will to change. –Charles Olson “The Kingfishers”
INGEBORG LAUTERSTEIN
How did I get from war-torn, occupied Vienna to Black Mountain College in North Carolina, USA? By change, of course. Taking a chance, following that yellow brick road to my Emerald City, Black Mountain and Charles Olson, the wizard. I was in my study, standing at my easel working on my "Wise and Foolish Virgins" painting when the door opened and there he was, his head almost touched the ceiling. He had an Easter-egg face with a moustache and glasses. His eyes often looked startled–in empathy–when he startled us. He enjoyed being unexpected; I knew that from the beginning.
This was his first day as our English teacher. As soon as he arrived he had gone to the library to see what books students were taking out. So he came to ask why, why was I reading Sapho, Murasaki, Jane Austin, George Sand–all those women writers.
I wanted to be a painter, I said, but up to that point most of the great painters were men. As writers, however, women had been great from way back. I wanted to find out what women writers had to say, how they lived and how they felt. When Olson kept looking at my romantic, blue-green "Wise and Foolish Virgins," which defied Albers and the Bauhaus, I became uneasy. He came a step closer, "I want you in my class," he smiled, towering over me. Soon he would make me feel big, extraordinary: a writer.
Charles Olson had found his way to Black Mountain to replace Dahlberg, who had made a fool of himself, both as a man and as a teacher, before he fled. The school hired Olson because he was married and because students liked his big, showy lecture that questioned Shake-speare's identity. His salary as a part-time teacher and lecturer was $120 a week plus travel expenses. This gave him a chance to go on working on plays for the Verse and Dance Theater in Washington. Besides, he liked the idea of coming and going in the manner of Chinese University visiting lecturers.
I found my way to Black Mountain through a Life Magazine article with pictures of Bauhaus artists who had fled Germany and found freedom as artists and teachers at Black Mountain. The new college did not believe that students should have to memorize meaningless facts in order to pass exams. I hated memorizing and much admired the picture of barefoot Black Mountain College students perching like birds among rafters during a lecture. Art was considered most vital in preparation for life-long creative thinking. I told my father that Black Mountain was the right place for me!
Page 6 • North Shore Magazine • August 10, 1995
Ingeborg Lauterstein sketches the students in one of Charles Olson’s classes at Black Mountain College.
Cover Story
Playing it safe was never safe with Olson. He would turn his class into a play pen [sic] as big as the world, to throw at us Homer, the Bible, Shakespeare, Dante and Ezra Pound, as warnings against greedy spoilers lurking everywhere, rationalizing their misdeeds. He believed that strong, personal ideas would teach us to find the right words and the right voice in writing.
Black Mountain College remains the safest place I have ever known. It was far removed from political events, war, threat of invasion and more war. Students and faculty had constructed the study building, which shimmered by our lake as though it might drift away. Snapping turtles sunned themselves on rocks. I hiked through the North Carolina woods with old Professor Dehn, the German mathematician and philosopher who came from Harvard University to lecture to us. He showed me wild orchids I had never seen before, as well as snakes and a bear near a waterfall.
Playing it safe was never safe with Olson. He would turn his class into a play pen [sic] as big as the world, to throw at us Homer, the Bible, Shakespeare, Dante and Ezra Pound, as warnings against greedy spoilers lurking everywhere, rationalizing their misdeeds. He believed that strong, personal ideas would teach us to find the right words and the right voice in writing.
The painter De Kooning and his wife Elaine were there when I arrived. Merce Cunningham was leaving. Rotund Buck-minster Fuller came later in the rotund trailer with several thin disciples in his wake to dazzle us all with an instant dome.
Olson, who was a disciple of Ezra Pound, also had a need for an audience of followers. I could not be one of them because I had come away from a time when everyone had to be a follower. "The Cantos" remained hard for me to read, and Pound's racist attitude was hard to intellectualize since Black Mountain Col-lege, unlike other schools at that time, accepted students and teachers of any race and any religion. Not until the middle of the year did the wild, sweeping, often freely contradictory ideas in the Olson class suddenly began to complement the Albers' method of teaching basic skills.
By the time I slipped my first poem under Olson’s study door, I was so well accustomed to being anonymous in the Albers’ class that I did not put my name on it. When Olson read the poem in class, and made so much of it, I just slinked away. The poem is lost somewhere, but the form of an inner and outer poem, after all those years, became the form of my new novel “Sun on Ice.” Nothing important is ever lost.
A sketch of Charles Olson by Ingeborg Lauderstein while she attended Black Mountain College.
Artwork: 1995.68.1
Charles Olson at Black Mountain College in North Shore Magazine
This work was created for the 1995 exhibition Remembering Black Mountain College curated by Mary Emma Harris in conjunction with Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center and the BMC alumni reunion organized by Mary Holden Thompson, founding director of BMCM+AC.
24 x 18 inches
In copyright
Gift of Ingeborg Lauterstein
Ingeborg Lauterstein, Charles Olson at Black Mountain College in North Shore Magazine, 1995. Photographs and printed paper on foam board. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Gift of the artist.
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