Non-traditional professor

Risks have paid off for ESU art chairwoman

For anyone in the academic world, if you were elected president of your national organization and were invited to China, Norway and Taiwan this summer to share your expertise, it would be a career highlight.

But for ESU art department chairwoman Elaine Henry -- whose academic career spans just eight years -- this success is ever more remarkable.

Henry dropped out of college and began a family, never expecting she would one day be an art professor.

"I was raised to believe that a woman should gain just enough skill to become a secretary," she said.

After a divorce, she started work as a secretary at a Grand Island, N.Y. architectural firm. She was later promoted to marketing coordinator. When she began working with company designers to develop proposals and slide shows, her interest in the visual arts began to take root.

"It was my first exposure to really good design," she said.

Henry moved back to her home state of Minnesota and worked as a marketing consultant and was later hired as marketing director of the chamber of commerce in Gillette, Wyo., where she would meet her second husband Richard Garver, a dealer for John Deere.

She left the chamber of commerce job and bought a local trophy shop, which doubled its sales under her management. Meanwhile, she started to recognize that her unfinished degree was a limitation after she was passed over in job applications. "People would know me, but then find out I didn't have a degree," she said.

Her husband encouraged her to go back and earn an art degree, pointing to her growing portfolio of woodcarvings and drawings. The couple moved to Laramie, Wyo. so the 44-year-old undergraduate could attend the University of Wyoming.

Neither had a job, and deposits and tuition had claimed most of their savings. As Henry remembers, they had $37.50 to their name. "We were both willing to say, 'What's the worst thing that could happen to us?'"

Henry earned money for her degree by selling advertising for the local yellow pages. Two-and-a-half years later, she had earned her bachelor of fine arts. She earned her master of fine arts from Southern Illinois University in 1995, putting herself through graduate school by painting houses while Richard used his professional connections to start a brokerage for used John Deere equipment.

Henry was hired at ESU as a temporary replacement for a Canadian art teacher whose work visa was delayed by federal red tape. With classes due to start in five days, art chairman Dean Perry called Henry and invited her to interview. The next day, she received her contract and arrived in Emporia the following week.

Eight years later, Henry is a tenured faculty member and chair of the art department. As president of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, she represents 4,800 ceramic artists. Henry has established close ties overseas, most recently named to the Zhujiajiao Ceramic Art Center in China, which has invited NCECA to curate one of its eight planned galleries.

"I think I have been compelled to work so urgently in my field because I got started late in life," said Henry, who would like to return to school for a Ph.D. and become a full-time studio artist and writer.

"What I like best about art is there is no 'ceiling.' You can never 'make it.' The next piece you do could always be your best piece and there is always another student you can influence," she said.

Last Updated July 2, 2007>