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by Robert Lloyd |
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RETIREMENTS ’01
John McMurray
McMurray often advised students on their independent projects—for instance, this balloon-go-cart hybrid crafted by Kenny Weiner (left) and Rush Taylor of the Class of 1996.
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John McMurray once described a magical metal gadget he remembers from his childhood in the tropical African bush. Poke one end into a campfire, and, at the other end, frost would begin to form. Fire and coals could be used to freeze a bowl of water. Perhaps this is where he learned the power of invention: heat can cause coolness, flames can be frozen, passing thoughts and emotions can be transmuted into permanent value. In thinking about John, one is forced to synthesize similar paradoxes. John, who graduated from Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., joined the Andover art department in 1968, at the beginning of a surge in art enrollments that has kept the art faculty creatively occupied ever since. From then until his retirement this spring, John has played sharply contrasting roles, acting sometimes as caretaker of valuable assets, other times as gadfly toward innovation. These two sides of John's mind—an ever-growing accumulation of knowledge coupled with an insatiable thirst for invention—go a long way toward explaining his effectiveness as a teacher. While his students could rely on him to answer most technical questions, they could also count on being pushed to "explore the possibilities" (a favorite McMurrayism), to seek unfamiliar problems and unexpected solutions. John's is a kinetic mind. Controlled by healthy common sense, rooted in a childhood in rural Africa, nourished by several years as a farmer in West Virginia, John thinks effective aesthetics reflect efficient, economic problem-solving. This approach fit right into the Bauhaus-based ethic of the art department of those earlier days. "It works," was what John's students wanted to hear when he looked at their handiwork. Many of those students have gone on to making things work in many fields. "Efficient, economic problem-solving." It's worth dwelling on these words. Perhaps from his missionary parents, perhaps from the ethics of rural life, John's style is shaped by conscience. "Waste not, want not" has been a central tenet, along with "make do" and "reuse." Repairing hundreds of "throw-away" plastic cameras for the Visual Studies course, reconstructing audio-visual equipment, salvaging intriguing scrap from a plastics factory or a military surplus depot, finding new uses for abandoned spaces—these activities have brought a gleam of triumph to John's eye and greatly extended the power of the art program at no cost to the school. Conversely, nothing irks him more than activities he sees as needlessly getting in the way of a solution. Bureaucracy in general and insurance companies in particular get a bilious eye—and the subject of how lawyers and fear of liability impede creativity brings out righteous indignation. When John becomes indignant, he sometimes fumes for a bit but soon slows down and crafts arguments that reason the case and invite agreement by appealing to the calm conscience—and sense of humor—of the reader or listener. This discipline, both in writing and in conversation, has served the school well in the intricate operations of academic politics, which are as passionate as any in the world. John's sense of fairness has shaped his administrative style as well, and his years as chair were steady and supportive for the art department. In John, we had an energetic advocate and a sympathetic boss. Spending evening and weekend hours in the teaching studios, creating courses to fill gaps in the teaching curriculum, picking up extra sections of courses that were understaffed, getting hold of equipment and supplies—in all these activities John set an example that shaped the department's coherence and morale. Three significant curricular contributions by John deserve special mention. First is his creation of the course in kinetics, in which students were asked to develop projects that moved—a challenge that for many students grew into a course in applied physics and inventions. Second, early on John brought computers into the art curriculum. The two children of this wedding between the computer and older technologies are now grown-up components of the curriculum—computer graphics and animation. Third, from the start of his teaching at Andover, John insisted on teaching by himself all the different segments of the Visual Studies course—2D, 3D, photography and history—so he could integrate them in the students' experience. Although contrary to the way the rest of the department taught, with different parts divided among different teachers, John's stand was a constant reminder to us that no curricular structure is cast in concrete, and that alternatives are viable. By exploring the possibilities, he kept the department open to changes, many of which are still under way. As John and his wife, Caryl, leave the fires of Andover and head down Maine, it seems that, even though this is the cold end of New England, they are entering a world ripe for invention. Robert Lloyd is a faculty member emeritus who taught in the art department for 35 years. He currently lives in Vermont with his wife, Susan, also an emerita faculty member.
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Copyright, Phillips Academy, 2001
