Appendix B - February 2001
Letter to the Campus Leadership Committee

Dear CLT,

I am a professional artist in the sense that I do art for art's sake and have had my modicum of success and continue to put artistic problematics, challenges and artifact-making at the center of my life and heart. Because I have never been interested in making art in exchange for commercial success, I have instead relied on teaching for my economic sustenance. I began my teaching career as a math tutor and have taught many diverse subjects since. Slowly, but surely, my disparate pursuits appear to be merging. (Resume attached and available at: http://www.2cyberwhelm.org/temirose/resume.html)

I don't honestly know why [the Fine Arts Coordinator’s] original email to K. touched me, but it did and I very much wanted to meet her. I had, and still have, no idea in particular of how best to organize our partnership. As I said at the CLT meeting, I prefer to work within any given environment's mores. It is far more interesting to me as an artist and as a socially committed citizen, to try and be of real help rather than work from a set of ideas that, regardless of their beauty, might nonetheless be utterly irrelevant to the people I wish to work with.

Most of the art forms I have trained in are collaborative art forms. Periodically it is necessary for me to work in isolation and I do it but it isn't what I like best. My very best work (I feel) is done with large groups when I act as producer/director as well as coach and participant. These are my favorite projects because they seem to me to increase people's faith in each other and in life itself. The joy that is crated when people find that they can build cathedrals is lasting, both within those who build and for those who wish to visit these uplifting artifacts.

Coming down a bit from lofty metaphors J … It seemed from Sable and my initial conversations, that the best way for me to serve your community is to help coordinate a group responsible for creating and maintaining your web site. I would also assume responsibility for coordinating the design so that the site can expand over the next few years in a sensible manner and be of greatest use to as many teachers, students and internal groups as possible.

Going to the student council for structural coordination and to a committee formed by the CLT for guiding vision sounds like a strong beginning to a seemingly daunting task. Perhaps next we would decide on a time frame and folks who feel comfortable being my contacts/partners in the school.

Sincerely, Temi Rose