On the west end of the Humanities building, adjacent to the business building is an enclosed hall that houses some special faculty offices. What are unusual are the doors. Whether it is the vibrant bright solid colors, or the individualized creative works of labor, fun and love, they all are expressions of some of Bakersfield College’s best faculty artistic offerings.
The offices in this hallway are based on seniority, and have an infamous side as well. It is affectionately known as “death row,” because, according to legend, this will be each professor’s final office until retirement.
“I don’t remember the genesis, but it seems like it sprang from a need for solidarity; both feeding the creative spark and doing something together,” said English Professor Kate Pluta, who is credited with inventing the initial idea. “Everyone got involved in something positive, and we are reminded of that positive feeling every day when we see the doors.”
English professor Cindy Hubble’s door motif is a leopard design with ‘Hubble’ spelled out in zebra.
“It all started with the chair,” said Hubble. “I recovered a chair I got from a yard sale. I put the cheetah print on it, and it just grew from there.”
Since then, many of her colleagues and friends fanned the tradition by giving her animal prints of some sort. “We have a fun hallway and we wanted to make it an exciting place for students to visit,” she said.
English Professors Brenda Freaney and Rebecca Monks share an office. Their door is divided diagonally. One side has a harlequin diamond motif. The other has a crown with large and small diamonds and gold inlays and represents Freaney’s contribution. “It’s just for fun. You see harlequin diamonds on costumes for court jesters. It’s a fun kind of symbol,” said Monks.
They get a lot of compliments and positive remarks, but it might not be feasible to spread the art doors campus wide.
“We’re enclosed here, so it’s kind of easier for us to do our own thing. If it were out in the open, it might not go over very well,” said Monks. “We didn’t ask. We just did it.”
Author and English Professor Gloria Dumler loves cats, and she also loves color. She remembers it was the Saturday before the start of the fall 2008 semester.
She had a cat poster that she cut out and decoupaged onto her door. Feeling it was bare, she purchased some acrylic paints and attempted a background. She primed over the first attempt and started fresh the next day.
“It was a painstaking process,” she said. “I knew I wanted to incorporate a lot of color, but it just wasn’t working for me.
Then, I got the idea of getting some white paint and doing wavy lines. The lines were what pulled it together for me.”
When Social Science Professor Steven Holmes graduated to the row, the doors were already designed. Because Holmes felt a deep respect for his colleagues, he followed in the tradition and planned a design.
Originally Holmes was going to make a palm tree, but he found a picture of the Titanic in the ocean behind what previously had been a closed door with some bookshelves on one side of the wallpaper.
The ocean is flooding through the open door.
“It’s opening the flood gate of knowledge,” said Holmes. “The books on the side represent a library, and I personalized it by putting SS Holmes on the bow.”
Holmes said that many of them are still young, and just because they’ve been here awhile doesn’t mean that they have lost their creativity.
Academic senate president and Political Science Professor Cornelio Rodriguez‘s office is also on the row.
His door has been primed, but has not received the final design. “I have a couple of ideas,” he said. “One of the things I’d want to put up there is the silhouette of the zoot suit and probably the low rider emblem”
In the past, Rodriguez had been approached about livening up his door and appears interested. He said he’s still open to the possibility of student collaboration, but if that doesn’t materialize then he will probably do it himself.