When Art and Life Intersect

He was the last person in Waco to drive through traffic in a yellow Volkswagen beetle and the first to wear bright neckties splashed with reclining figures from famous museum masterpieces. As director of The Art Center since 1987, Joe Kagle has never been shy about expressing new and unusual ideas or taking a second look at old ones. To cross his path is to encounter an ongoing lesson in artistic experiment.

He uses the word "tangible" to explain his approach to art, for he thinks "hands-on" experience is far better than textbooks, reproductions, and Kodak slides. During a recent lecture at McLennan Community College, he donned three different neckties with Greek, Roman, and Egyptian themes, changing them as he moved through the styles and characteristics of each era. When he wanted to display the "spirit of ages", he lined groups of students and built "human sculptures," posing them to represent the dominant mood and architecture of the period.

"I'm first and foremost a teacher," Kagle explains. To hear him talk leaves no doubt of that fact. A walk with him through The Art Center galleries yields a detailed array of background information, combined with interesting insights and wry reflections about the paintings, sculptures, and other media being displayed.

When a particular exhibit contains works leaning toward the avan garde, Kagle's conversation convinces the uncertain that the pieces in a current exhibit are on the forepoint of artistic expression. Employing a clarity which cuts straight to the main point, he offers opinions with an affable conviction aimed to disarm even conservative diehards.

He likes Waco and enjoys being director of The Art Center, because "this is a city where people are willing to listen," he says. "It's easy to get a hearing here. People accept you when they think you have something to offer." He came to Waco because "Waco wanted to do what I wanted to do - maker art a part of the community." He says he welcomes the opportunity to preach the values of art from his regular soapbox in the Waco Tribune-Herald Board of Contributors section, where he writes a frequent column exploring what he calls "aesthetic values."

Kagle believes that art is for everyone, and that a person without artistic training can have a significant encounter with great art. He likes to recall his boyhood, growing up in the household of his father who earned his livelihood as a milkman. "My father had a very good eye for art," he says, "though he couldn't explain the technicalities of what he liked. LIke my father, many people respond to art on a personal level be recognizing that a work of art has something which keeps drawing them back to it. If you can't 'get rid of' work of art, then there must be 'something there.' When a work of art stays with me, then I know it's important."

On a technical level, persons trained in art can articulate the characteristics of the art they enjoy, he explains. They are the ones who can say why a piece of art is good, pointing out lines, color, texture, pattern, contrast, light and many other criteria. "You can always ask someone whose judgement you respect to give you technical reasons which will explain why you like a certain work," Kagle says.

Of course, there's more to art then just what's in the gallery, Kagle is quick to point out. There's architecture-plenty of it throughout the city of Waco - a form of art which is ripe with lessons for the trained eye. During recent walking tour of downtown Waco with a group of area teachers, Kagle pointed out the interior Gothic arches and exterior buttresses at Saint Paul's Episcopal Church on Columbus and Sixth Streets and the Romanesque facade, exterior side buttresses, barrel vault ceiling about the inner sanctuary and the tripple mural above the altar at Saint Francis' Roman Catholic Church. "The church is a real treasure," he says of the church that lies just across the green from the Waco Convention Center. At the old downtown courthouse, he noted the Corinthian columns and the long series of buttressing steps "leading up to the law." At First Baptist Church, on Fifth and Webster Streets, he observed the theater-like exterior which resembles the famed Haggia Sophia church and the barrel vault semi-dome arched over the sanctuary. At Saint Paul's A.M.E. church, he noted the "simple, direct, Quaker-like" wood- framed interior architecture with a central dome above the sanctuary, and he pointed out the opaque glass windows for which new stained glass windows are being designed by internationally renowned Waco artist Kermit Oliver. The plan is the result of a collaborative aventure utilizing Kagle's expertise and his enthusiasm for this historic building constructed by one of Waco's early black congregations.

Kagle is enthusiastic about the artistic and visual potential all over the city of Waco, comparing it to a "canvas that is not even half finished." He says, "We have the river, and -unlike many eastern cities - we have nothing to tear down in order to develop this waterway. Waco can make something unique here." He recalls being vividly impressed by the sense of "wilderness beneath the towering cliffs" along the riverbanks, as he looked up from the Brazos Queen riverboat one evening.

Kagle's central message is that artistic imagination belongs everywhere and should be a major component of all of life. Art is the key to life management-by- objective sometimes means you "shoot the arrow first, and then you paint the targets." Creative thinking means working with your canvas or your medium without being rigidly determined to achieve a particular outcome. "When you work with rather than against your canvas, the picture 'emerges for you'," he says. "If we don't stay open to emerging possibility, we will get the same result everytime. We'll be like turtles and only paint helmets, repeating what we are already accustomed to."

In human management situations, Kagle believes that communicating with others should involve more listening and less telling others what to do or think. He says, he tries "to listento what others say about what I said to dinf out if I am communicating." He adds, "A good manager is a good teacher." On the scale of communication, "talk the lowest level, showing is better than talking, working with people is better yet, and leaving them alone to work things out while you stand by as a consultant is best of all."

Of his own role as director of The Art Center, he says, "I don't have a high stress level. The Art Center staff has the professional expertise to accomplish many things while I pursue projects which advance the future of art in Waco," Kagle is interested in extending the function of The Art Center into the community through projects with Waco I.S.D.'s adopt-a-school program and through creating sites for hands- on experiences with art that lie closer to heart of the city and function as satellites to The Art Center. He has undertaken a campaign to raise $3 million dollars in order to expand the facilities at The Art Center by 1997.

Through it all, he says, he has been able to remain a "maverik" and to "take risks" in order to preach the value of art for the community at large. "If you raise the cultural waters, all the boats go up," he says, using one of those metaphors which so frequently spice his conversation. At The Art Center he says he's taken risks in his choice of exhibits because he believes in recognizing "emerging artists." He acknowledges the expertise of his board of directors, who have established a climte where experementation in many genres and styles is welcomed.

With academic degrees from Dartmouth University and the University of Colorado, he has specialities in both literature and the fine arts, and he uses this dual background in his role as a spokesperson for the arts. He draws from a wide range of experiences which include academic teaching at Wisconsin State University, Washington and Jefferson College, Washington State University, Keuka College in New York stats, and World Campus Afloat with Chapman College, where he "taught art and art history around the world." At the University of Guam he was director of Fine Arts Center and chair of the fine art department, and he served as executive director of the Southeast Arkansas Arts and Science Center and the Brockton Art Museum in Brockton, Mass.

When he has time, he pursues his own painting career. He once took two yours off from his academic and executive pursuits to set up his own art studio, where he successfully marketed and exhibited his paintings. He still paints several hours a week in order to stay on the cutting edge of his field, His days are busy, speaking thoughout the community to raise funds for The Arts Center, serving on community and state boards such as Greater Waco Council on the Arts, Leadership Waco's advisory committees, the Texas Commission on the Arts' Educational Peer Review Panel, the Texas Association of Museums' state planning committee - and more. And on every Saturday morning you can find him bowling with Special Olympics bowling team where he says he gets a "fresh look at creativity" by observing the delight in the participants every time they make a score.

A man keenly in touch with his humanity, avidly "in love with my wife of 38 years," and devoted to his familly which includes a son and a daughter, Joe Kagle is a man who lives and breathes the artistic experience in every setting. He spends his days campaigning to persuade others, throughout Waco and beyond, to join him in his ongoing adventure.

DISCOVER, October 1994