A Lot of Fun at the Art Barn

Rose Milovich, the Preservation Manager and Exhibition Program Director for USU's Special Collections and Archives, took classes in the Art Barn in the late 1970s. She shared with us some of her memories of the Art Barn and the camaraderie among students there.

Ms. Milovich studied ceramics in the Art Barn and was involved with raku, a Japanese form of pottery. She related some stories about doing raku at the barn:

". . . they used to have the raku kilns at the back of the barn and there was a kind of a fence around it. There was a cluster of students who were there eighteen to twenty four hours a day and I was one of those students. We would eat together and fire pots and make pots. One of our friends Masihiro decided that we should cook dinner over the raku kilns, and so he made fried rice over the raku kiln . . . It was a lot of fun; it was like a family. We were all different people and all from different places. We helped each other . . . We would take turns [watching the kilns] and relieve each other. Somebody would stay there for three hours, somebody else would stay for six, somebody else would go through the night.”

In fact, she remembers a lot of students staying in the Art Barn all night:

“That wasn’t uncommon. It was actually pretty common. There were a few couches around. The drawing studio was on the third level. There was a little loft on the top and a little ladder you could go up if you wanted to sleep. You could bring a sleeping bag. Now you would never think of doing that . . . It’s a whole different world of security and safety.”

She also offered some details about the interior of the Art Barn in the last years before the new art building was completed and the barn was transformed into offices and labs:

“When I was taking ceramics in the Art Barn there was an area that was set aside for glazes and doing glaze work. That was on the east side of the building, pretty much the whole length of it. On the west side, the larger part, they had all the potter's wheels. They had some kick wheels and they also had some Shimpo electric wheels…The second floor when I was there was strictly sculpture. The third floor was drawing. There was some jewelry casting that was taught underneath sculpture. They did some metal casting.

"My most vivid memory is walking in and seeing all the potter's wheels and the clay all over the place. They had a room that was humidified so that your ceramics wouldn’t dry out too quickly. You would walk through it and you would have to go through it sideways because it was so small. If you turned this way you would knock somebody’s pots over.”