Artist's knowlegde used to educate

Catherine Courtlandt will finish her master of fine arts at SF State this semester.

But her love for the arts began two decades ago, in Harlem.

When Courtlandt was 4, her mother, then 38, decided to go back to school to get a degree in fine art. So for night-care, while her mother was pursuing her education, Courtlandt would attend Harlem School of the Arts.

"It was drawing at 4, dance lessons at 6, piano at 8," she said. Courtlandt will graduate with a master's in interdisciplinary arts, a department of the creative arts school that allows students to combine more than one venue. She attributes much of her interest in art to her mother, who shared her education with Courtlandt.

"When we would go buy art supplies, we would do it together. When she bought a pencil, I got a pencil. When she learned calligraphy, I learned calligraphy. Everything she did, I did," Courtlandt said.

She was also part of summer programs which provided art education to children in Harlem who may or may not have been exposed to it otherwise. She remembers painting a mural in New York City in 1985 as part of one these programs. Ten years later she organized a similar mural painting project in Pittsburg, a city in the East Bay. She said she was giving back to her community.

"If I don't do it, who will?" Courtlandt said about her commitment to education through the arts. "That kind of drives me forward."

This interest in art, instilled by her mother, led Courtlandt to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, where she earned her associate in arts degree.

While still in New York, Courtlandt worked summers as a puppeteer in a traveling marionette show that played predominantly in lower-income areas of the city. It was during one of these shows that Courtlandt had a revelation about her life.

She was doing the puppet show for a group of African American children. After the show, she came out from behind the stage's makeshift curtain to talk to them. When they saw her, they realized she was African American, just like them. The children never expected one of the puppeteers would be black, she said.

"You realize you are showing people there is a bunch of stuff they can do. The sky is the limit, nobody should be limited."

"That's the gravy," she said. "That's why I do things."

After receiving her associate's degree she moved to Philadelphia, where she received her bachelor's degree in radio, television and film from Temple University. Then it was time for a change for Courtlandt. In 1991 she moved to the Bay area, three years later she started school at SF State.

She said SF State appealed to her for a number of reasons. The degree in interdisciplinary arts would allow her to pursue her wide array of interests -- from dance to music to film to photography. The campus life itself reminded her of Temple, a commuter school with an older, more mature student body. She was also attracted to the history of the school and expected it to be a place where she would feel very comfortable as an African American.

"I was excited about being a part of what it had meant at one time," she said. "It was a rude awakening to be the 'only' in some of my classes."

When she completes her degree this semester, Courtlandt will become one of four black students to have graduated from the College of Creative Arts on this campus.

She is currently the only African American graduate student in the interdisciplinary arts department. This has been a problem for Courtlandt.

Often the only black student in her seminar and lecture classes, Courtlandt said she felt the students sometimes hesitated to give her feedback because her art was often about her ethnicity.

One student, Joe Moore, who finished his master's work as Courtlandt was starting hers, has been able to give her the kind of criticism and encouragement she hoped for. While planning his final project at SF State, "Black Power, Black Art," he and Courtlandt and other students met every Wednesday night for a year.

"We developed our own community," Moore said, alluding to the lack of African Americans in the arts. "That's what you have to do."

Courtlandt has used her art to combat some of the things she's faced as one of the only African Americans in the interdisciplinary arts department. During her first semester, when a woman in one of her classes was constantly stereotyping black people and making broad, incorrect generalizations about African American culture, Courtlandt responded in a class assignment on experimental criticism.

The assignment, a paper that everyone read aloud in class, fostered what she recalled as a "positive and educational discussion on race and being the other in a dominant society."

"When you are in these situations you want to get angry, but then you could lose your mind and that could have repercussions on you," Courtlandt said. By opening discussion through her paper, she said it placed the subject out of an emotional realm where the issues can be distorted. She had to find her own peace with the student's comments.

When she confronted this particular student on why she felt she could speak for black people and black culture, the student said "because I've been on welfare too."

"You just have to figure this person would have to be crazy to say these things," Courtlandt said. "You can't let yourself get beat down by it."

Whether she sees herself as an "only" or not, Jim Davis, director of the interdisciplinary arts center, said she is well-respected by her peers in the department.

"She's just a pleasant person to be around. Everybody knows her," Davis said. "People look at her as a center."

Davis, Courtlandt's adviser for two years, also points out her academic achievement is excellent. She has received two California State University grants to continue her education.

"In the seven years I have been the director of the center, I have never heard of a student getting two fellowships," he said.

Where does Courtlandt intend to go now? Various community projects and exhibits are leading her toward education through art. She said she thinks she may teach someday, but wants to have a few years to do art first.

"I'm still an art maker, always will be, but I really like doing community projects that give information. I like cultural projects in general," she said.

The most recent project she completed was a book devoted to the Black Panthers. The book was a collection of photographs from the Black Panther movement with comments from people who were touched by the movement, she said. She also collaborated with Moore on this project.

She is working on her final project for SF State at the moment as well. It is a piece on remembering her father, who died when she was in her early 20s. This piece may talk about how the mass media portray black men and how that may affect children and young adults of all ethnicities.

If that doesn't seem like enough, Courtlandt is also actively involved in a media-literacy program at Balboa High School where she is teaching students to be concerned about how they are represented.

"I know she's going to go out there and do things," Davis said. "She's a leader in ideas, culture and the world."

[ Golden Gater Online February 29, 1996 ]

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