Jeff McQueen
1973 B.A. Art Pitzer College. California
1978 MFA Sculpture University of Massachusetts
I wasn’t exposed much to art as a kid in the 50’s and 60’s. I thought being an artist was being able to draw which was intimidating because drawing was something I’ve been utterly incapable of my whole life. I discovered photography in high school and took hundreds of photos at antiwar demonstrations in Boston during 1968 and 1969. The magic of seeing an image appear in the developer tray probably started my interest in art. I had my first photography exhibit in 1971 where I was a student at Lake Forest College.
I moved to California shortly after and became a ceramics major at Pitzer college. I studied with Dennis Parks the first year and then Mutsou Yanagihara a visiting potter from Japan. I finished my art degree at Scripps College with Paul Soldner who was the most prominent American potter of that era. By the time I graduated in 1973 I stopped making anything functional and was making ceramic sculpture.
After graduation Paul Soldner hired me to work a few hours a week in the studio at Scripps. That income and a little bit of gallery work, figure modeling for art classes and tuning cars kept me solvent and living with a group of friends. Conceptual art was a new way of thinking about the creative process and was influencing artists, at least around Los Angeles. I received a $4000 grant, my first and only, to make a piece of conceptual art. I don’t remember what the concept was but it must have made sense at the time. I mixed 4000 pounds of sewer pipe clay and bought cases of champagne. I advertised the event as “Ceramic Softball Game and Champagne Reception”. The 4000 pounds of soft clay sat in a big pile in a field. Attendees threw the clay at each other, drank all the champagne, and never played softball. In the spirit of the times nothing was recorded.
I started moving into different materials, like putting goldfish in condoms, or using the tuck and roll from Southern California low rider car culture. And whenever you think putting goldfish in condoms is a good idea you also think getting an MFA is a wise choice.
In 1976 I arrived in Amherst, MA as a MFA sculpture student. Most of my work over the two years there was somewhat conceptual to the extent that I worked with specific ideas expressed through mixing images and text. It was clear pretty early that getting a teaching job was unlikely and making it as a studio artist particularly with my very personal idiosyncratic work would be equally difficult.
I was hired as the director of a small arts organization, Leverett Craftsmen and Artists. I continued to make art and resurrected my pottery for a while. The US is a hard place to be an artist and like so many I became one of the “in at 20, out at 30” art dropouts. Succeeding as an artist requires either brilliance or great persistence and I was short in both categories.
Then came the dark years. America was not hiring guys with undergraduate ceramic degrees and a graduate sculpture degree was even more suspicious. So I did the unthinkable, I went back to school for an MBA, the solution to being unemployable. When that magic degree didn’t do the trick I went to a career counselor who looked at my resume with an MFA and MBA and pronounced it a “Two Headed Monster”.
But eventually I was in a suit at a desk. In 1988 I taped a piece of hair to the ceiling in my office. And then another. The Hair Museum was born. Donations started coming in - hair from a cow’s udder, a grey pubic hair, squirrel hair, nose hair. The collection grew, visitors came, discreetly. The Hair Museum was my major artistic success of the 80’s.
Late in the 90’s I gave away a dozen dark suits and started working in the woods in a business I started, Morse Hill Outdoor Eduction Center, Inc. I was back in the physical world, and if not making art exactly I was working with logs, and stone and earth in creating activity spaces in the woods.
Eventually I began making things again. My shop in Leverett burned down in 2015. But I now have a well equipped space for welding, woodwork and anything else that has produced all the recent work on this site.
1973 B.A. Art Pitzer College. California
1978 MFA Sculpture University of Massachusetts
I wasn’t exposed much to art as a kid in the 50’s and 60’s. I thought being an artist was being able to draw which was intimidating because drawing was something I’ve been utterly incapable of my whole life. I discovered photography in high school and took hundreds of photos at antiwar demonstrations in Boston during 1968 and 1969. The magic of seeing an image appear in the developer tray probably started my interest in art. I had my first photography exhibit in 1971 where I was a student at Lake Forest College.
I moved to California shortly after and became a ceramics major at Pitzer college. I studied with Dennis Parks the first year and then Mutsou Yanagihara a visiting potter from Japan. I finished my art degree at Scripps College with Paul Soldner who was the most prominent American potter of that era. By the time I graduated in 1973 I stopped making anything functional and was making ceramic sculpture.
After graduation Paul Soldner hired me to work a few hours a week in the studio at Scripps. That income and a little bit of gallery work, figure modeling for art classes and tuning cars kept me solvent and living with a group of friends. Conceptual art was a new way of thinking about the creative process and was influencing artists, at least around Los Angeles. I received a $4000 grant, my first and only, to make a piece of conceptual art. I don’t remember what the concept was but it must have made sense at the time. I mixed 4000 pounds of sewer pipe clay and bought cases of champagne. I advertised the event as “Ceramic Softball Game and Champagne Reception”. The 4000 pounds of soft clay sat in a big pile in a field. Attendees threw the clay at each other, drank all the champagne, and never played softball. In the spirit of the times nothing was recorded.
I started moving into different materials, like putting goldfish in condoms, or using the tuck and roll from Southern California low rider car culture. And whenever you think putting goldfish in condoms is a good idea you also think getting an MFA is a wise choice.
In 1976 I arrived in Amherst, MA as a MFA sculpture student. Most of my work over the two years there was somewhat conceptual to the extent that I worked with specific ideas expressed through mixing images and text. It was clear pretty early that getting a teaching job was unlikely and making it as a studio artist particularly with my very personal idiosyncratic work would be equally difficult.
I was hired as the director of a small arts organization, Leverett Craftsmen and Artists. I continued to make art and resurrected my pottery for a while. The US is a hard place to be an artist and like so many I became one of the “in at 20, out at 30” art dropouts. Succeeding as an artist requires either brilliance or great persistence and I was short in both categories.
Then came the dark years. America was not hiring guys with undergraduate ceramic degrees and a graduate sculpture degree was even more suspicious. So I did the unthinkable, I went back to school for an MBA, the solution to being unemployable. When that magic degree didn’t do the trick I went to a career counselor who looked at my resume with an MFA and MBA and pronounced it a “Two Headed Monster”.
But eventually I was in a suit at a desk. In 1988 I taped a piece of hair to the ceiling in my office. And then another. The Hair Museum was born. Donations started coming in - hair from a cow’s udder, a grey pubic hair, squirrel hair, nose hair. The collection grew, visitors came, discreetly. The Hair Museum was my major artistic success of the 80’s.
Late in the 90’s I gave away a dozen dark suits and started working in the woods in a business I started, Morse Hill Outdoor Eduction Center, Inc. I was back in the physical world, and if not making art exactly I was working with logs, and stone and earth in creating activity spaces in the woods.
Eventually I began making things again. My shop in Leverett burned down in 2015. But I now have a well equipped space for welding, woodwork and anything else that has produced all the recent work on this site.