by Joe Liles
Faculty Emeritus; Instructor of Art; NC School of Science and Mathematics
Introduction
I have been assigned to write a paper about my memories of moving into the Art Studio at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. But I must confess that it is necessary for me to digress even before I can start the story. This is because the move was not instantaneous; it was a seven-year process.
The Start of the First School Year
I started my job as Instructor of Art in August of 1980. It was hot! And the school was a mess. At that time, it was really more of an abandoned Watts Hospital than it was a school. The Hospital had mainly moved out only four years earlier. We teachers were given the
responsibility of taking the spaces assigned to us, cleaning them up, and getting them ready for the first class of students which was set to arrive right after Labor Day in September. Everyone – teachers, administrators, staff – worked to get the dorms ready. And we weren’t ready! My memory has it that we had to delay the opening of the school by a week. We worked like maniacs doing jobs we never imagined would be in our job descriptions. The day before the students arrived, we were putting covers on all the mattresses and putting together dorm room furniture.
Move-in day was chaotic but enormously meaningful to everyone. The students were anxious yet full of hope. Most of them felt that they were pioneers forming a new school, the first residential public supported high school dedicated to science and math in the country. Our new school found its way to the covers of both Time and Newsweek magazines. The students were surprised by what they found waiting for them. They discovered the original morgue of hospital days, complete with a marble slab table, refrigeration drawers for dead bodies, and a human brain in a jar of formaldehyde. They discovered many things. The old delivery rooms had operating tables and enormous lights. The cafeteria was non-existent.
I am sure many of the faculty, staff, and administrators shared many of my feelings. I felt, like the students, somewhat of a pioneer. I was anxious as well. I was moving like a body on adrenaline. There was so much I needed to do planning-wise to get ready for classes. Plus, I started an endeavor that would last another 30 years: I photographed everything. I took photos of students with suitcases accompanied by parents and younger siblings. I took photos of the conditions in the dorms. I took photos of every gathering our school had during that move-in time: the first time the students were assembled in a group, an academic assembly, school-wide picnic on the concrete tables next to the woods behind the school. Despite all the uncertainties, most everyone was smiling. The students seemed genuinely happy with the new friends they were making.
I was told that the Art Program would have to start out in temporary quarters because the eventual site of the Art Studio was slated to be in the old Operating Pavilion and Emergency Room of the hospital. That part of the old hospital was then condemned and boarded up. My temporary quarters were to be the old Newborn Nursery on the third floor of the north wing of what is now Bryan Center. The name Bryan Center had not been formally declared yet. Yes, it was true that Joseph and Kathleen Bryan were to donate over a million dollars to help the school get started, but most everyone initially called the huge brick building that was the main entrance into the school “The ’53 Building” because it was finished and dedicated as the new addition to Watts Hospital in 1953.
An Early Art Class
I remember one of my first classes was an Art Application class where, over the semester, I planned to take the students through some self-discovery exercises followed by experiences in drawing, screen printing, and photography. There were too many students to fit within the Newborn Nursery, so I set up tables and chairs in the long hall that ran the length of the building.
We did “dream drawings”, “abstract self-portraits”, and “blind contour drawing.” In one of the early classes, the students were doing still life drawings of objects I had placed on the tables. I noticed that some of the students were not paying attention to my directions but were, instead, looking at something way down the hall. I turned to look as well and saw something flying toward us. I couldn’t tell what it was, but it was big. As it got closer and closer, I could tell the students were getting uncomfortable. A few screams rang out. Some students covered their heads. It was a giant, flying cockroach!
Fortunately, the roach landed on the floor and not on a student. I chased it into a corner and stomped on it with my pointy-toed cowboy boots. Problem solved. We went on with class.
An Early Photography Class
Another experience stands out in my mind. It was the first time we used the new photographic darkroom I had labored hard to build. It was located in a long narrow room that had “Baby Washroom” painted on the door. This was the last room on the hall before you got to the four Delivery Rooms. This was the place where babies were brought immediately after birth to be cleaned up, wrapped in a blanket, and taken back to their mothers.
I chose this windowless room for the school’s first darkroom because I could get it totally dark. I had red “safelights” in four stalls that contained enlargers for students to enlarge their black-and-white film images onto light-sensitive photographic paper. The room had a long countertop where I put a series of trays for developing and fixing the photographic prints. There was a sink with running water that students could use for washing their prints. Drying the prints would be done in the hallway outside.
I had painted most of this room black to avoid reflecting any of the white light that the enlargers would use to focus the negative image onto a paper easel below. But there was a plaster wall above the sink that was painted white. It was not next to the enlargers, so I was not inclined to paint it black. In fact, if it was white, it could be used to reflect the red safelights I had in the room that would allow students to see their work environment but not expose the paper.
The problem was that with the thousands of babies that had likely been birthed next door in the Delivery Rooms and then washed in this room, the white wall was streaked with what I assumed was blood and other unmentionable body fluids. This would not do! So, before the students came, I had attempted to paint over the stains. But the stains came through the paint. It took five coats of paint before this wall would stay mostly white, but you could still see traces of blood. This was the origin of my first ghost story for the new NCSSM, and it figured into what happened the first time I used the darkroom with students.
Normally, the plan for the photography class was that students would use a small closest farther up the hall for loading their film in total darkness in light-tight film developing canisters. This closet could hold one or two students at a time. Once the film was loaded onto a tricky little reel and placed in the containers, the lights could be turned on and the students could take their canisters down the hall to the Baby Washroom where we had running water that was essential for the developing process.
But for my first photography class, I needed all twelve of my students to load their film onto the reels and into the cannisters. This needed to happen in one class period. I decided that we could do this as a group in the main Darkroom with all the lights turned out. This way if the students had difficulties loading their film, they could hand me their loaded reel, and I could check it to make sure it was done properly. Mind you, all this would be done in total darkness. The plan was that, once all the film was checked and loaded into the cannisters, we could turn on the lights.
On the fateful day that we were to develop twelve rolls of film, we all crowded into the darkroom. Each student laid out in front of them their roll of film, a bottle opener for prying open the film container, a pair of scissors, the reel, the cannister, and the light-tight top. I must admit that my ghost story may have influenced what happened next, but there were other factors involved that may have contributed to what happened. It was a small room. There were twelve students plus me. There was only a little ventilation.
I asked all the students if they were ready, and if they had everything in front of them that they needed. When all said they were ready, I turned out the lights. There was the sound of students opening their rolls of film and rolling them onto the developing reels. I estimated that it would take 10 minutes for all the students to get their film into the cannisters. I figured it was the perfect time to tell my ghost story.
Hey you guys, do you realize that we are in the Baby Washroom of the old Watts Hospital?
This is where the babies were cleaned up immediately after they were born next door in the Delivery Rooms.
I hate to tell you this, and you can see for yourself when we turn on the lights, but there are blood stains on the wall above the sink.
Well, when I was testing this room for the first time to see if it would work for developing film, I turned the lights out and was loading my film just like you are doing now when I heard a baby start to cry.
This baby cried until I could get my film in the developing canister and turn on the lights. As soon as I turned on the lights, the baby stopped crying. What do you think was happening?
At that moment I heard my student, Kim, speak. “Mister Liles, I don’t feel good. I think I might faint.”
I immediately told all the students to get their film into the cannisters with the lids on. When they said their film was safe, I turned on the lights.
I went up to Kim to see how she was doing. She collapsed in my arms. Kim was a rather small person. I didn’t have any difficulty picking her up. A student opened the Darkroom door for me, and I carried Kim into the hallway outside. She was already starting to come to and said she was OK, but I carried her all the way to the elevators. I punched the down button with my nose, and when the doors opened, there stood a pair of bewildered looking parents. I explained that I needed to get this student to some fresh air. We took the elevator to the first floor, and I supported Kim as we walked outside.
Kim fully recovered. I suppose I should have taken Kim to the Infirmary, but we had no Infirmary. I learned some important things from this experience. I learned I needed to be more careful with my students and pay attention to both environmental conditions and hazards in my classroom and lab areas.
And maybe I needed to cut back on my ghost stories.
All of this points out that everyone at the new North Carolina School of Science and Math was emersed in a challenging environment that came with turning an abandoned hospital into a high school.
The First Art Program Move
The next year, the Art Program had to be moved up to the fourth floor of the north wing of Bryan. This was because, in the remodeling of the second floor of the wing for a new Chemistry Program for the school, a dangerous condition was discovered in the flooring.
Back in the hospital days, the second floor was used exclusively for surgery. There were six Operating Rooms. To eliminate the risk of someone setting off a spark due to static electricity that could cause an explosion of the gases used in anesthesia, a metal grid was embedded in the concrete slab floor. This grid served as a type of grounding rod for all errant electrical charges. It seemed that the disinfectant cleaning liquids that were used to clean the floors had corroded the metal grid in the concrete. This had caused the concrete to decay in strength.
It turned out that the entire floor had to be torn out. This would be a huge job that would impact the floors above and below. The first floor would have to be vacated because it would lose its ceiling to the demolition. The first floor would also have to be fitted with a temporary network of supports to handle the weight of the wet concrete when a new floor was poured above. The third floor was deemed safe from construction, but the noise from jack hammers would be unbearable.
It was decided that the fourth floor of Bryan was safe to use for the second year of NCSSM. The Art Program would occupy the northern half of the hall, and the Math Department would occupy the southern half. This floor had only been recently abandoned the year before by the labs of the new Durham Regional Hospital. This was the hospital that was built to replace the vestiges of the dual healthcare system of the Lincoln Hospital for the black citizens of Durham and Watts Hospital for the white. It was true that Durham’s original hospitals had racially integrated in 1965, but it was obvious that neither Lincoln nor Watts Hospitals were equipped to handle the growing population of Durham. The plan was to close both Watts and Lincoln and start over with a new modern hospital with no connection to the segregated systems of the past.
This construction on Durham Regional Hospital had been mostly finished in 1976, and patients had been moved in. But several essential functions of the new hospital needed to remain in some of the buildings of Watts Hospital even after the School of Science and Math moved in. These were: the blood and fluid labs, the hospital laundry, and the Watts School of Nursing.
These remaining hospital functions remained during parts of the opening year of NCSSM, but now they were gone. The fourth floor of Bryan that had housed the hospital labs during the first year of the school could now be taken over by the Art Program and the Math Department.
It worked to my advantage to be on the fourth floor. The Math Department benefited by knocking out a few walls and building two new large classrooms. There were few offices as well. Down at my end of the hall, there was one large room I could use as my main classroom, and a bunch of smaller rooms that were former lab rooms for the hospital. The Math Department was not interested in these small rooms, so I was welcomed to put them to use. I turned one into a very nice, larger black-and-white darkroom with air conditioning, one into a small color darkroom, one into a storeroom for art supplies, and another for a new ceramics studio. I used one room for making silkscreens and their stencils, and a final one for cutting glass and making frames for student art. We had an entire campus in need of artwork in public places.
In the main art classroom, I taught the Art Applications class that I had done the year before that dealt with drawing, painting, printmaking, and photography. I added a class in ceramics with a new electric pottery kiln. I offered a class in mechanical drawing and used the main classroom for this. We used the main classroom for extracurricular activities as well including a new tradition of producing a multi-media slide show for each of the two semesters of the school year.
This slide show was immensely popular with the students. They (and I) took color slide pictures, categorized them into sections like move-in day, classrooms, dorm life, athletics, and more.
Life continued for me like this as Instructor of Art for several years. It was obvious to the NCSSM administration that the Art Program was very popular with the students. Consequently, the school first hired a ceramics teacher and then expanded that position to include teaching of all the art media I had established. It is unusual to find art teachers for advanced secondary education who can teach many different media. Most specialize in something like painting, sculpture, photography, ceramics, printmaking, etc. We found a teacher who could join me and do it all! This was Elizabeth Moorman.
Seamlessly, Elizabeth waltzed in as a half time teacher not funded by the State, but funded by the Parent Fund. With Elizabeth, we were able to expand the number of classes we taught. Elizabeth was a virtuoso in ceramics, so she took the lead in that discipline, but she also taught sections of the other classes. She left the Mechanical Drawing class up to me. With two teachers, we were no longer the Art Program, we were the Art Department!
Building a New Art Studio
As the school years progressed, we approached the time that we would realize the pinnacle of the Art Department. This would be remodeling the old Operating Pavilion and Emergency Room into a first class Art Studio. The Robert W. Carr Architecture firm was picked for the design and supervisor of the construction. I worked with “Judge” Carr and his son, Edgar, during the design process.
I couldn’t believe my good luck. I was given a blank slate by the school and the architects to take the entire square footage of the hospital surgeries, sterile supply facilities, X-ray department, emergency rooms, pharmacy and turn them into anything I wanted. The main operating room with a huge skylight and glass wall would become a Painting and Drawing Studio. A second operating room would serve as the Main Art Classroom. The pharmacy room would be dedicated to engineering and architectural graphics and CAD (computer aided design).
The emergency department would be remodeled to house both a Ceramics Studio and Black-and-white Darkrooms, the autoclave area that was used by Watts Hospital to sterilize surgical equipment was designed into a Graphic Arts Darkroom and large format photography studio. And the old X-ray department would become a Printmaking Studio for woodblocks, lithography, etching, linoleum block printing, and screen printing.
Design and construction took most of two years. I was able to identify cabinets, tables, sinks, and more from still-condemned parts of Watts Hospital to be reconditioned and used in the new Art Studio. I refinished beautiful solid maple cabinets from the lab areas of the old hospital for use in the ceramics room. State funds were used for most of the new construction, but Strawbridge Photography Studios provided money for the new darkrooms and the Philip Morris Corporation provided a big chunk of the expenses for building the rest of the Art Studio.
I remember an experience I had in the remodeling for the Art Studio. I wanted the new Mechanical Drawing Room to have a nice sound system so I could play music for the students to work by. This room was constructed in 1908 with a slab floor that was three inches thick. I had noticed some ventilation grates on the outside of the building that led to a three-foot high crawl space underneath this slab floor. I drilled ¼” holes in the slab from the room above at locations where I wanted to put a sound system cabinet at one end of the room and two speakers at the other. I pushed the speaker wires through the holes into the crawl space below. I went outside and crawled through the open ventilation hole. I wore long pants, a long-sleeved shirt, plastic gloves, and a breathing mask. I found the wires coming from the speaker holes and pulled them up to the other end of the room and fed them up through the hole that would go to the sound system. With a little more work up top, I had a functioning sound system for my students! I supplied all the equipment and speakers from stuff I had at home that I didn’t need.
But this story has a dark side. A day or two after I had installed the sound system, I was organizing the equipment in the printmaking room. I moved a stack of silkscreens from a corner of the room. I immediately saw a small, shiny, black spider make a run for cover. I do not want to offend anyone about my next move, but like I did years before with the cockroach, I stomped on that spider. Upon investigation of the carcass, I spotted the classic red hourglass on the spider’s underside. This was a poisonous black widow!
Where there was one black widow, there could be more, so I talked to Gregg in the Maintenance Department and asked him if he could arrange to fumigate the crawl spaces underneath the Art Studio. I couldn’t be moving students into a new space that had the possibility of a black widow population!
Gregg wanted to inspect the crawl spaces first and crawled into it the same way I had. He returned with the report, “Joe, that space under the Mechanical Drawing Room is infested with multiple black widows.” The fumigation happened, and we never saw another black widow. I often think back on my venture into that crawl space and marvel that I was spared by the spider residents.
The New Art Studio Move-in Day
Things were nearing completion after the start of the 1987 – 1988 school year. In the late fall, I publicized a “Art Studio Move-in Day.” On that day all the students in my classes plus walk-in volunteers carried equipment and supplies from fourth floor Bryan to the new Art Studio. Other sites at the school were also used to store new equipment, tables, and chairs.
Elizabeth Moorman’s job was expanded to full time, and we hired an Arts and Crafts teacher for the evening hours. This was Bryant Holsenbeck. We immediately began operating at full capacity, day and night. I should add that both Elizabeth and Bryant were paid with Parent Fund money and did not have the job security that I enjoyed as a 10-month, term contract State employee. But even with non-ideal contracts, the teaching of art and interacting with students at the School of Science and Math was as close to ideal as a teaching job can be. This was somewhat enabled by the fact that all the art classes were electives and were not required specifically for graduation. Most if not all our students wanted to be in our art classes. And they got to make things. And make things they did!
We had an Art Studio that was likely better than those of any high school or college in the state of North Carolina. It was a pleasure to work with ambitious students in well-equipped, multi-faceted studio spaces.
A Final Story
I told you that this writing would be about my moving into the Art Studio at NCSSM. Well, I have completed this task, but I have one more story before I go.
In 1929, an anonymous donor arranged to have a concrete quartz-lined goldfish pond constructed in a garden area outside the Operating Pavilion. When Science and Math moved in, the goldfish pond was still there, but it no longer held water due to cracks in its walls and floor.
Shortly after moving into the new Art Studio, several students approached me about the possibility of repairing the goldfish pond. I said I would investigate. I found a swimming pool repair man in Timberlake, NC who inspected the goldfish pond and said that he could grind out all the cracks in the concrete and repair them with a patching compound that could withstand ground movements. He said it would be ideal if I could collect a lot of white quartz rocks that we could use to replace the rocks he damaged in his grinding.
I knew that security officer Bobby Jackson lived in eastern Durham County where he had mentioned to me that the fields around his house were full of white quartz rocks. Bobby supplied us with buckets full of beautiful white quartz to do this job. The pool repairman also said I could save a lot of money if I removed all the dirt around the pond. This was an intimidating job.
The students came to the rescue. We spent weeks digging out the goldfish pond. Mounds of dirt lined the area. We pressure washed the interior of the pool and the outside walls. The swimming pool repair guy was amazed at the quality of the student work. He completed the repair job in April of 1988. After everything had cured, we replaced all the dirt and timidly filled the pond up with water, 1,100 gallons of it. The students figured this out.
I was anxious for two reasons. One was obvious. Would the goldfish pond hold water? The other was quite personal. My wife, Carole, was expected to give birth to our second child the next day by a scheduled Cesarean Section.
I got up early the next morning and walked the two blocks from my home on Wilson Street up to the school. When I rounded the corner into the Art Garden, I held my breath. When I caught sight of the goldfish pond, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The pond was full of water and had not leaked a bit!
This pond was turned into a real water garden with blooming lotus plants, lily pads, arrowhead plants, elodea, snakeroot, aquatic snails to eat algae, many goldfish and koi, and a re-cycling pump for a waterfall. One of my Mechanical Drawing students drew up a design for the Art Garden with benches, shrubs, and a brick walkway around the pond.
I am happy to report that, as I finish this report of how I moved into the NCSSM Art Studio, my daughter, Elizabeth, is now 37 years old. And so is the repaired goldfish pond and water garden. Both Elizabeth and the goldfish pond are alive and well.*
*The goldfish pond (including time before and after it's repair) is now 96 years old.
