04/17/2018
When Alyce Weeks Gordon Patrick gave the founding collection to create the memorial gallery at the Blount-Bridgers House, her vision of cultivating a love of the arts in our community is further demonstrated below. The following was written by Paul Nagano, a former student of Hobson Pittman and well known artist living in Hawaii and the photograph is of a recent gift to the memorial gallery commissioned by another student of Hobson's and created by Mr. Nagano.
LOOKING BACK, LOOKING FORWARD
In 2009 I received an unusual commission from an admirer of an extraordinary teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, which I attended from 1963 to 1967. His name was Hobson Pittman, and this admirer of "his wonderful skills as a teacher" wanted a kind of memento of him.
As a teacher of painting, his special abilities were on full display once a week, when any student at the school could bring in to the auditorium a work they wanted him to look at and 'critique'. There was always a long sign-up list, and one's work would be discussed before an audience of students -- whoever wanted to look and learn from his commentary on the works.
He was a favorite teacher of many of the students not only for his astute comments, but for his wide knowledge of the arts (not just painting and sculpture, but music, theatre, opera, even dance.) Hobson (we called him that amongst ourselves, though he was Mr. Pittman to his face) was a southern gentleman from Tarboro, NC, though he was by then a long-time resident of Bryn Mawr, just outside Philadelphia, where he lived in a genteel home with gardens.
Hobson died a few years after I graduated from The Pennsylvania Academy, and some years later, a museum dedicated to his works and collections opened in Tarboro under the Blount-Bridgers House Foundation, the second floor of which became the Hobson Pittman Memorial Gallery.
On April 28, there will be a celebration of the museum with a Gala, called Alyce's Gift 2018. For that occasion, the owner of my painting has donated it to the Museum. It's titled: "Apotheosis of Hobson Pittman", and in my interpretation it is a fond memoir of the teacher whose influence was greatly felt by me and others at the art school where I had my beginnings as a picture maker.
lovanaloha,
Paul
