Darnel Haney Interview

A short while ago I had the privilege of interviewing Darnel Haney in Ogden, Utah. He was a very pleasant gentleman and gave great perspective as seeing the Barn not only as a place of learning, classes, and office space but also as a place of sanctuary in a racial atmosphere. Darnel played basketball at USU in the early 1960s and encountered racism and ostracism from both the college and community. He was blamed for the basketball team's failure his first year and received negative feedback for dating and marrying a local white girl from the community. The excerpts I have included only a short blurb for the blog and I would encourage anyone interested to listen to the full interview for greater perspective into racism.

Darnel Haney Interview

Born: February 6, 1937 in Phoenix, Arizona

Recruited by Utah State University to play basketball

“I was contacted by Utah State, at that time the head basketball coach was Cec Baker. They had won the NIT the year before and they were looking forward to a great year in basketball…That was a disaster that first year, it was absolutely a disaster. We had conflicts in basketball on the court. We were rated first in the nation and we didn’t live up that expectation. The coach was fired that year and much of it had to do with my being there at Utah State. I was an Art major and during my frustration I would go to the Art Barn. I had an advisor by the name of Larry Elsner who took the time and talked to me. They blamed much of the non-success of Utah basketball team on me. At the time I was dating my wife. She is a white girl from North Logan, Utah. She wasn’t a student at Utah State and they did not like that situation at all. As I remember Larry Elsner was one neatest people I have ever met because he himself was married to a Japanese woman. Occasionally he would talk to me about situations, he said ‘my marriage is not recognized in this community either.’…He was a quit giant I call him, Larry was just a sweet person, had limited conversation, but what he said, it meant a lot. I would go to that Art Barn many times and throw pots. Throw pots means you put them on the wheel. You could take your frustrations out there…We would sit in the Barn until 11 o’clock at night, throwing clay, making pots, doing what have you. It was a sort of therapy for me. And it was a lonely time for me because I had very few friends.”

“On the basketball team we had conflicts. As I said the coach was fired the one year. The players were in disarray and were constantly at each others throats. And the community felt that I was responsible for much of this. In all the frustrations which you have in a community, I had no one who I could talk to.”

Describing the Art Barn and impressions – he stated that there was “a lot of enthusiasm. I walked in there and there were a lot of people doing different things. It was a relaxed atmosphere. There was a freedom in there that was not every place where you go on a campus. Smiles were there and helpful hands were always there. And most of all the instructors were just a part of the students. It wasn’t just a person up there, an authority but he was a part of his class.”

-Jason Neil-

Adrian Van Suchtelen Interview

This week I had the opportunity to interview Adrian Van Suchtelen. Adrian taught at Utah State University in the Art Department from 1967 to 2003. He was born in Java in the East Indies and has some amazing travel experiences including being raised in a Japanese concentration camp (I am actually going to do an independent interview for that experience). He had some great stories about his work in the Art Barn. Some of these experiences include:

“We had this custodian, he was a pretty old guy, he had no teeth. He was very poor, he couldn’t afford to go to the dental services. He talked kind of funny but he cared about the art barn. He cared so much about them that he looked out for the students. He looked after students, he looked after me, he looked after Larry. 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. 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.”

“The Ayatollah was in, at that time still called Persia, now it is Iran. They had the revolution there and it even hit a small place like Logan, Utah. We felt it hear and things were happening…I remember one morning, suddenly I was stopped there [in Art Barn] before I went up the stairs. [Somebody said] ‘Adrian, do you realize we are having some problems with people, somebody came in last night and turned on the gas valves on the ceramic kilns.’ They turned them on, didn’t light the kilns, just turned it on and we happened to think that there must have been some terrorist from this Middle East situation that could have done that, I don’t know. If somebody 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 student to keep their eyes out for any suspicious happenings, strangers in the art barn, etc. And to always be on the lookout. We left the back door open, the back door to the back stairs, to the fire escape. We left the back door open in case.”

“Students would bring in their dogs because we were bye 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.”

-Jason Neil-

Horse Barn Is Modern

While working on another project in the USU Special Collections I discovered an article in the old Student Life Newspaper in 1919 about the new modern horse barn. I transcribed it quickly and thought you all might like to see it.

Jason

“Horse Barn is Modern”

Student Life,

Logan City, Utah

Friday, October 10, 1919

Volume XVIII, Number 4

“The old students of the school who were not here last year, are no doubt surprised at not seeing such a familiar landmark as the old horse barn. There is now nothing left to show where it stood except a few rocks. No matter what happened to the old barn, a new one has been built to take its place. The new horse barn was built by Alston & Hoggan of Salt Lake City, at a cost of about six thousand dollars. The plans were drawn up by the Animal Husbandry Departments with the assistance of a local architect. It is made to hold eleven horses; there are six individual ventilated stalls, four large rommy[sic] box stalls, running water, grain bins, hay and straw chutes, a harness room and an office. The floors are made of cement, thus making it possible to keep them clean without difficulty. It is newly painted inside and outside giving it a very attractive appearance. Those who have visited it and know what a barn should be seem very well pleased with it. When it was first finished, it was planned to have a real old barn dance in the loft, which has a good hardwood floor, but it had to be used for storing hay, so we may expect this dance to be given later. Those interested in good farm buildings should not miss seeing this one."

Dear Fellow Barn Members,

Here is a small version of the Architectual drawing which was discovered in the USU Special Collections. It is a proposed Music Hall from 1952 (well before the Art Barn). It has some names and details attached to it that are most interesting. Unfortuntately the quality is not excellent as I had to downgrade resolution for blogger purposes. If you would like to access the full print quality image just ask me and I am sure we can work it out. Otherwise I will be giving Bonnie a burned disc with this drawing in good resolution as well as the other documents I have posted on it as well.

Jason

*Hint - Click on the image and it will enlarge so you can read the writing for the Music Barn.

More Discovered Documents 5

Copy of actual project request form for remodel of Art Barn and letters from William Lye and others. It appears in the third letter that they were toying with the idea of demolishing the Barn and putting up a new structure in its place, but they wanted to retain the historic significance of the building and took steps to help that.

Jason

More Discovered Documents 4

These are copies of the work order for renovation and a proposal to turn the Barn into a Hobby center

Jason

More Discovered Documents 3

Dear Fellow Barn Work Members,

These are letters and memos from Harold Kinzer who apparently had a large role to play in getting use of the Barn for his own department and utilizing the space.

Jason

More Discovered Documents 2

Dear Fellow Barn Members,
These are drawings done by Harold Kinzer and the use of the Barn space by the various departments. The letter is from Gael Lindstrom about using the Barn.

Jason

More Discovered Documents

Dear Fellow Barn Work Group Members,

Here are a few more documents which you might find interesting. They relate to proposed uses of the Art Barn and give insight into who was involved in the decision and renovation process. These are documents from the Food Services and the Photography department for space in the Barn.

Jason

New Discovered Documents

Dear Fellow Barn Project Members,

Today while I was at the special collections Bob Parson told me that he had come across some Art Barn documents that I might find interesting. I looked through several folders and discovered quite a few documents of interest. It seems that when the Art Department shifted to the new Art building there were quite a few departments debating and asking for the space.

There were several letters and proposed architectural drawings which were created by the departments as a proposal for the space. I made a few copies of some interesting documents for my own use and thought that you might find them interesting as well. One of which was from Thad Box (I was able to interview him recently and thought this added some context to it) about the use of the Barn by his College, another from the Art Department still wishing to use the kilns and space, and was a floor layout of the first two floors being used by different departments (unfortunately the third floor drawing is not in the collection).

One thing which I could not copy due to size but which I thought was interesting were two architectural drawing (fairly large size) of a proposed Music Hall from 1952. Apparently the university was proposing, planning, or toying with the idea of transforming the Horse Barn into a Music Hall and musical instruction facility. From the date it is possible that this idea formulated well before the university even thought of the Art Barn.

Jason Neil