I went to the Newark Art School on the G.I. bill in the mid-1970’s. What it may have lacked in physical décor, it more than made up for in the expertise of the instructors and the enthusiasm of the students; our imaginations festooned the walls.

The oldest teacher there was a woman named Dorothy Caesar. No one knew exactly how old she was - in her late seventies at least. “I can remember those World War One veterans and their hip flasks!” she would intone, lecturing us on former students. In a life drawing class, I once asked for her opinion of a pencil sketch I had done of the model. I was in an odd mood that morning, and the picture was done in a very stylized way.

“OH! Cheap! Cheap! Comic book art!” she exclaimed. Despite her prejudice against any popular culture past 1930, I did learn quite a few techniques from her that served me well in my career; but she was still quite a character. Every Monday morning, after reading to the class the obituaries from Sunday’s Newark Star-Ledger, she’d walk off to the other classes to collect for an animal shelter she helped support.

She still lived in her little cottage in Newark, surrounded by public housing on three sides; the last, lone link to a Newark far away in the past. As I said, she was old when I attended school. You can imagine my surprise when, ten years later, I recognized her voice on a radio call-in show. It was definitely Miss Caesar. The host even referred to her by her nickname – “Queenie” – and listened politely to her outrageous opinions.

Mr. Sienna, our watercolor teacher, - although he had no discernable foreign accent – either couldn’t or wouldn’t pronounce sounds made by the letter “s” and was constantly substituting the “z” sound. “You will have zix azzignmentz in thiz zemezter! And watch your washez!” He was constantly harping about our washes – that is, how we would apply our watercolors to the paper. Despite his eccentricities, he taught with élan.

The students were a mix of very talented people. There was the disco king who could caricature like Mort Drucker. “Pointdexter” was an arrogant little guy who wore a Dutch fisherman’s cap (all the rage that year among “serious” art students). “ Pointy” could replicate a Rembrandt and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

There was Arty, who got bored during a Regional Design class and started drawing flying cats. These were cats with beanies with propellers on their heads. He would draw them flying and fighting and getting blown apart. It was pretty funny, but Miss Clemens, the teacher, was not amused. Miss Clemens was an “arty” type that no one ever seemed to be able to please.

“And what’s this?” she demanded rhetorically of one picture of a cat in a zippered metal suit with an oxygen mask and helmet.

“High altitude cat!” he told her. It was obvious to anybody.

There was a quiet guy in the class the year behind mine, who could draw in pen, brush and ink photo-realistically, in the same vein as Neil Adams. His name was Bill, and he was as modest as he was talented. After he graduated, he was quickly picked up by Marvel Comics, where he started drawing Moon Knight, and even did an ALF cover. He’s since gone on to do the storyboards for movies like The Green Mile and The Grinch.

 One of the most memorable characters was a student we nicknamed, “Timebomb”. Timebomb was a year ahead of my class. He wore his hair long, rarely spoke, wore a leather jacket – even on the hottest days – and seemed to walk in slow motion. He had a perpetual grin on his face, his eyelids were always at half-mast, and he would surreptitiously take a slug from a hip flask he kept in his back pocket.

One rainy morning, on the way into school, we saw Timebomb accidentally drop his portfolio into a puddle. Rather than being upset, he swooshed his work around in the puddle, cackling, “Mr. Sienna’s gonna love these washes!”

Timebomb’s claim to fame was that he had been fired from his summer job as a Good Humor ice cream man. One day, halfway through his route, he took a notion to “drive down the shore.” While touring through some Jersey Shore towns, a cop pulled his ice cream truck over for speeding. The cop called his boss to report him, and the boss told Timebomb he was fired and he should return with his truck to headquarters.

“So, I drove my truck into the ocean, ringing the bells the whole time,” he told us. The art world has known few such moments.

One of the pieces I did in art school that I was really proud of was a gauche portrait of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce. I've been interested in the history of Native Americans in the Old West since reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown, many years ago.The painting is long gone, but recently - along with a pencil study of Quanah Parker of the Quahadi Comanches - I did a pencil study of Chief Joseph, using the same photo for reference that I had used so long ago; I may attempt another portrait.

 
Chief Joseph (left) and Quanah Parker

Another piece I liked – also long gone – was a clay piece I did in a sculpture class. It was a facemask of a scowling middle-aged man with a crew cut and a Charlie Chaplain moustache. Out of the corner of his mouth was a short cigar butt.

After it had been baked in the kiln, I painted it with acrylics and decided to give it to the artist who had designed the character. The next time our photography teacher sent us into Manhattan - via the PATH – to take pictures, I brought with me the facemask, wrapped in twine and brown paper. I walked uptown to a building near the New York Times building, took the elevator to the proper floor, and knocked on Steve Ditko’s studio door.

The co-creator of Spider-man was gracious and was happy to learn that I was an art student and that he had been one of my main inspirations. I handed him the package. He cut the twine with an x-acto knife and unwrapped the paper. He said, “Tsk!” and shook his head, but he was smiling as if he was face to face with an old friend he hadn’t seen in a while.

He chuckled as he handed the face of J. Jonah Jameson (the newspaper publisher character in “Spider-man”) back to me and said something like, “Pretty good.”

“It’s yours,” I told him. But, he wouldn’t take it.

“I don’t draw that strip anymore; I have no use for it,” he told me firmly but politely.

I kept it and used it as a paperweight on my desk for many years until one day gravity got the better of it. It was always a happy reminder of the day I had first met one of my heroes.