Looking out for the Art Barn

Adrian Van Suchtelen, an award-winning artist who taught in the USU Art Department from 1967 until 2003, shared some of his memories of the Art Barn with us.

Many of Professor Van Suchtelen's memories were about how students, professors, and staff in the Art Barn looked out for one another. He recalled one elderly custodian who, he said, really "cared about the Art Barn. . . . He looked after students; he looked after me; he looked after Larry [Elsner]. He had discovered that this other janitor had been stealing tools. I mean expensive power tools, because sculpture has a lot of expensive tools. And he had been watching him. This guy had figured out how to take the tools and hide them in the garbage can. He would come back later and take them out of the garbage can. But this guy was onto him, and he had taken the tools out of the garbage can before he came back at night. He had saved us, he had saved the Art Department, just a huge amount of money, the way he looked after us. I was so thankful for that, and the students were very excited and thankful about it."

The custodian was elderly and did not have the money for good dental care, so he had lost all his teeth. Professor Van Suchtelen told us, "We decided to have this raffle and this fundraising. I went around my fellow faculty, and they went around to the students, saying, 'We are raising enough money to buy him a set of teeth for Christmas.' And he was so happy. I don't have to tell you. We bought him a set of teeth for Christmas, and it was the best Christmas present that he ever got."

Besides theft, the Art Barn community sometimes had to watch out for other threats. During the revolution in Iran in 1979 there were fears about terrorist attacks even at Utah State. One night someone came into the Art Barn and turned on some gas valves and there were concerns that it could have been the work of would-be terrorists. Professor Van Suchtelen remembers, "If someone had lit a cigarette, and the whole place would have blown up, and there would not have been an Art Barn anymore. I was obliged to warn the students to keep their eyes out for any suspicious happenings, strangers in the Art Barn, etc., and to always be on the lookout."

There were also tensions within the Art Barn community from time to time. "Students would bring in their dogs because we were by ourselves in the Art Barn. It was sort of an isolated place. And one of the custodians had become very annoyed with that idea, so he wrote on the wall, 'No Dogs Allowed' [but he spelled it] A-L-O-U-D. Some student had written, right underneath it, 'And No Dogs A-Quiet Either.' He wrote it in big, big letters."