2023 Cabot Executive Lecture: William Stoehr ('70), National Geographic Maps | UW-Stout

hello everybody can you hear me nice to see you welcome everybody doing well semester off to a great start yes yes yes resounding yes okay well I am Katherine Frank I am the chancellor and I I'm playing double duty today so in one role I will be my regular introduce a little bit about what this event is about that's what I usually do and Scott Kitt who is responsible for this wonderful series is unable to join us today he'll be back on campus on Friday to to um place the plaque uh that celebrates our speaker um but I am I'm doing his part two um which is uh usually to say a little bit about uh the speaker as well so I'm going to begin by telling you about why we are here um and that is due to Scott cabitt again who can't be with us today Scott is an Alum of stout and he established this series in honor of his father Arthur cabat and he passed away about 40 years ago on September 15th um at the at the age of of his death he was 64 and his father is he started a pets Products Company um he was a founding member of American Pet Products Association and he was a longtime board member and served um on as the association president for three times and his father Arthur believed that individual companies couldn't be strong without a strong industry and his view was that everything is part of something larger and he devoted a great deal of his time and energy to help build the industry he was a part of and he believed in the sharing of best practices and you'll as you hear this listen to how this uh this uh Series unfolded so he found great satisfaction in sharing those best practices with others and helping them to start and improve their own businesses so he was a mentor he encouraged others um to to get involved and and to build so as I said Scott cabitt is our proud Alum and while he was here at Stout Scott's parents includ you his his father Arthur um thought very highly of stout they appreciated the education that Scott was getting and Scott will talk about that you know what what the Stout education meant to him why he came to Stout that applied learning um that problem solving that engagement that mentoring he'll talk a lot about mentoring so his parents are very invested and stout and so when uh Scott's father passed away he wanted to honor his memory and he said Scott will say I don't want I don't want him lost to history at least not right away um is what Scott will say and so when his father passed away Scott went to then Chancellor Swanson with an idea and he wanted to continue his father's love of helping others by sharing his experience with others especially young people and he wanted to do it at Stout so the following year that was 1984 the first cabit executive residency was held um and the inaugural Resident was William Norris the founder of Control Data Corporation and now 39 years later we're here today there's been a diverse group of leaders um and and managers in business industry nonprofits and healthc care that have come and served as cabit Executives and shared their expertise with our community um and now I have the pleasure of introducing this year's cabinet executive so William Bill Stair is the next in this long line this long history of cabet Executives and I met bill was it last year we met we met at homecoming and he is a 1970 St graduate he currently resides in Boulder Colorado with his wife Mary Kay a 1971 Stout graduate industrial arts and home economics right industrial tech oh industrial tech Industrial Tech I was close and home economics and any guess where they met at Stout in 1967 you'll never get where not a bar not a bar yeah where homecoming bowling alley the lunch line they met in the lunch line in 1967 um and so they have shared a a remarkable Journey filled with innovation creativity and dedication so a little bit about Bill Bill's artistic talents have earned him International Acclaim with his award-winning artworks gracing the walls of universities art centers museums and galleries including our own uh across the globe but his journey to becoming a full-time artist is just one facet of his incredible story before immersing himself in the world of art Bill along with his wife Mary Kay founded the recreational map company Trails Illustrated and so what started as a as a humble Venture in their basement eventually caught the attention of a little organization known as the National Geographic society and it led to its acquisition so Bill held several prestigious roles that showcased his leadership and vision he served as a president of National Geographic Maps overseeing the organization's worldwide mapping operations his time at the National Geographic Society was marked by significant contributions where he also held the positions of director and Senior vice president bill has a strong commitment to making the world a better place and at extends Beyond The Boardroom he has dedicated his time and energy to various causes serving as an officer and director on several boards notably he played a pivotal role in the peace initiatives Institute an international organization with a focus on achieving long-term peace through initiatives involving children addition his involvement with big city Mountaineers a program offering Wilderness experiences to at risk inner city teens demonstrates his dedication to Youth Empowerment um he has presided over the international map trade Association representing map Publishers seller sellers government agencies and softw software developers from all corners of the world and as I said it all started here at Stout um um and he is a proud graduate he received the University's prestigious prestigious Medallion award which is now does anybody know what that Medallion is now called Sam e Samuel Ewood Medallion and during his time here he was actively involved in student government um he was also captain of both the track and cross country teams and that showcases his dedication to Athletics and AC academics he is dedicated to making this world a better place I am so honored to be able to introduce this year's cabinet executive Bill Stair thank [Applause] you how many of you are first year students good it's been 57 years since I was in your place in just beginning to understand that the college experience was much more than classes and study in 1965 I was 17 years old and I desperately wanted to be an artist William duning and Jackson poic were my Art Heroes but I didn't become an artist for a lot of reasons just yet then 40 years later I quit the best job I ever had you just heard about that with National Geographic to become a full-time painter so at 56 years of age I figured I was young enough to start a new career and why not do what I wanted to do when I was 17 back in ' 65 so back in 1965 my family and I had no idea how to research much less how to apply and pay for college most of my classmates in Burlington Wisconsin did not go to college so my parents and I sat down with our high school counselor and he suggested that I work alongside the um illustrator for our local weekly newspaper it was called the Burlington standard press so here I am and I am thinking Jackson poock and William duning and they were thinking doing ads for LC's dress shop so it was a little problem there so anyhow I'm not sure at that point if I really did know what I really wanted to do and I could not afford art school um or a more selective or elite school at the time and I doubt that I would would have even been given a second look but along the way I think some people saw some potential thankfully for me and one day in my drafting class Mr norin asked if I was thinking about college and I Shrugged my shoulders and I said I don't know he said why don't you apply to where I went Stout state a few months later Dro a dad dropped me off at Fleming Hall tuition was any guesses anyone guess 10,000 5,000 any others 15,000 150 you can look it up because I've been telling people for years yeah it was only $150 and I thought no that's crazy so I looked it up it's on the internet $150 per semester so now when asked by a friend of my father's what kind of job industrial Tech would pre uh prepare me for I said I don't know Stout was the perfect place for me it but it was my launch pad and that's the issue so today I'd like to introduce you to a truly great business mind and this is a dreamer and an adventurer someone who followed a vision not knowing where it would lead someone who may be more relevant today than ever before and of course you know who it is it's Alice in Wonderland so this is from the book how many of you have read Alice okay all right how many of you have seen the Disney movie okay all right okay so this is from the book now imagine Alice and her sister sitting by the river it's hot Alice is tired and bored suddenly a white rabbit appears takes a watch out of his waist coat cries out that he is late and hurries away Alice jumps to her feet burning with curiosity ran after it and was just in time to see it pop down a rabbit hole in another moment down went Alice after it never once considering where she was going or how in the world she was going to get out she just did it as a stout freshman I was required to take physical education is is that required yet do you have to take PE to graduate I had to learn to swim to graduate that I'm serious I mean that's not a bad idea but but we took PE and we had a different uh thing we did every uh sport we did every quarter so I'm out on the football field and our coach after every thing of touch football uh during our gym class would have us run around the goal pulse and I you know I kind of lag behind and jogged in the back and I was just happy to get back in the gym and shower up and there were two guys there that would always race and uh they every class they were like this going and so one day I thought well I think I'll just race them so I beat them both and uh they were both high school track Champions that were recruited to Stout for track and so they up me and they asked me if I was going out for track they introduced themselves and and asked me if was if I was going out for track and Now understand that I had not participated in any High School Varsity Sports notada no zip zero so I said yes I was going out for track I loved track I Lov my teammates I loved practicing I loved competing I loved everything about it when I came back as a softw more I went off for cross country and I pledged a fraternity goofed around a lot and became fully absorbed with having a really good time which resulted in academic probation and I was ineligible for track and Not only was I ineligible for track but I might flunk out now this was 1967 why wasn't it a good idea to flunk out in ' 67 Vietnam War and I had a very low draft lottery number so it was as good as one so I'm thinking I was really stupid and I was devastated but then one very cold monomane evening I eased my way into the cafeteria line now the cafeteria used to be in what's now com Tech okay that was the Student Union and we ate there this was pre- commmons before the commons was built so I I snuck in the line I don't do that I hate people that do that but I had a couple friends there so I E sidled alongside side of them eased into the line and struck up a conversation with this lovely girl in front of me that was Mary home at class of 1971 and we've been together for 56 years it was love at first sight at least for me and I was at the right place at the right time and it was the best meal I ever had okay Devastation infatuation love at first sight how about those for a kick in the butt I studied hard I worked hard I trained hard and I Gra graduated with an education and experience that would serve me and of course with my future wife so after graduating we moved around the country on a training program and we settled in Minneapolis we focused on buying Remodeling and restoring a wonderful Victorian home built in 1911 we worked on starting a family and I began working on my MBA and I played a lot of rugby we certainly thought about our future but we really didn't have any kind of a plan we just had this vague idea so let's discuss this but let's do it with Alice in Wonderland okay one of the great many great characters in Wonderland is the chesher cat do you remember that with the disappearing body and the smile Still Remains one day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a chesher cat in a tree she asked the cat now this is the first time she's met the cat she asks the cat which road do I take his response was a question where do you want to go I don't know answered Alice then said the cat it doesn't matter which road do I take where do you want to go I don't know then said the cat it doesn't matter but it does matter okay there was the caterpillar you remember the caterpillar he sat on the mushroom with the hookah so Alice Came Upon him sitting on the mushroom with says hookah they looked at each other for a long time just stared at each other and then the caterpillar took the hookah out of his mouth and said in a sleepy Voice who are you who are you what are your core values what are your experiences perspectives what are your goals your passions your attitudes and habits that Define you who are you think about it who are you and where do you want to go is there anything more basic more important than that these were the right questions for us to ask ourselves at this point now hold that thought we're going to return to that I want everybody to stand up everybody stand up this is a requirement this is this is your PE since you don't have it anymore I want you to put your hands on your knees and I want you to go like this you are now Short Stops Short Stops for the Milwaukee Brewers okay so let let me tell you about that you can sit down now as a short stop you always have to be ready to catch the ball if by chance it is hitting your direction you need to be in the right place at the right time you need to be prepared and well trained and also willing to take a calculated risk and dive for the ball when it's hit over to the side oh I'm sorry sorry okay so we left Minneapolis and I went to work for a company in the Milwaukee area boy Stout really came into play here so I quickly became a product manager involved in the design production and sales of a product line all of which exactly mirrored my courses then I became the manager of quality assurance again I took the courses here then manager of production and yes I understood production methods and process is care of Stouts 1960s playbook for me and then I became manager I was 31 years old and I had 300 employees uh with manufacturing engineering industrial engineering all fulfillment and purchasing operations and I could not have been better prepared sounds like the perfect job so let's talk about the perfect job the perfect job can and should provide multiple things like social connection intellectual stimulation advancement potential how about some good pay and mine did but it must also align with my own values and there needs to be a sense that I'm working on something important and worthwhile this was not my perfect job and I wasn't happy and now you might ask me well who are you and where do you want to go so Mary Kay that's my wife and I talked about this a lot and we also thought that this was all wrapped up in maybe the most important decisions that we make the two of us who is your partner well we nailed that one then what do you want to do and where do you want to live family and we talked about this so family was important and we want to have kids then either through our jobs or as volunteers we were passionate about working for causes that involved kids and teens and also about the environment we wanted to travel and we wanted to work together and we wanted to start a business so we wrote all that stuff down we wanted to have easy access to the outdoors ski fish hike Camp you get the idea what we wanted to do in 1964 we visited the Rocky Mountains for the first time we were in the Foothills above Boulder Colorado any of you been to Boulder well these great foothill mountains right outside town and we went up in the mountains and we looked down and we said we're going to live in the Colorado mountains so we started to put a plan in place we knew it wouldn't happen happen overnight these things don't and we also knew that it might also take multiple inm steps we started our plan we wrote down our wants and our needs you know our solid mus haves and then it would be nice to haves we gave them numeric values on a scale we had them in a spreadsheet and so we were serious about this and and over the next few years we decided after multiple vacation research trips that we wanted to live in one of three Rocky Mountain areas and then later on an island I mean why not as long as we're doing this in dreaming so during this time I completed my MBA and continued to take Advanced courses I was offered a faculty position at two different Milwaukee area universities no mountains though but this got us thinking that well you know maybe maybe Academia might be the right place for me and like Alice we were willing and able to try new and different things so I had lunch with a mentor he was was the president of a local University and he said why not take some time and go back to school full-time don't waste your time on your current job if you don't like it learn firsthand if Academia is ready for is really for you and decide what you really want to do so that fall I started working on a doctorate at the University at Northwestern University I was thriving I loved it but we were really struggling financially and it was very very very hard on us as a family while studying one spring afternoon I heard a sound on the other side of my closed office door I opened it and there sitting on the floor was our four-year-old son softly crying and he said Dad I just want to see you so you all remember what MC Jagger said you can't always get what you want but you just might find that you get what you need and we were about to get what we needed so after my first year I left Northwestern along with a full scholarship a research assistantship and we decided to sell our house and just move west but wait there's more out of the blue I was offered a job in Colorado and I said it would take it for two years so in 1982 we moved to Evergreen Colorado and from that day overlooking Boulder in 1974 it took us eight years to get to Colorado who is your partner check where do you want to live check two down one to go so when people ask me how we got into the map business I say by accident I managed the badly fracture my leg on a business ski outing and I remember we're in Colorado so this this was you took your customers and business associate skiing I was in a cast for six months we were going buggy wanting to hike and camp and ski I still have the steel bar in this Lake it raises heck in the airports my surgeon said that I could ride a bike with my cast on so we purchased three Mountain Bikes mountain biking was very new in 1983 the handlebars were all like this and there weren't that many mountain bikes available and also we couldn't find any Dependable or environmentally friendly trails to ride on so I can I contacted a publisher sent a couple of sample chapters and we wrote the first two mountain bike guides to Colorado on weekends Mary Greg our son and and I bike new trails Mary Kay researched a flora and fauna and history and I got up at 4:00 a.m. every morning to write one book became the number one bestselling non-fiction book in Colorado so we needed maps for these books and and we were thinking about using St that were produced by a little or a company in Denver so I picked up the phone and called and come visit said the voice on the other line so as I drove down to visit I drove through this commercial District in Denver all of a sudden I'm in a uh residential neighborhood and I figured for sure I'd made a wrong turn and I drove up to a modest home a kindly looking older woman who was probably 10 years younger than I am now answered the door and took me into the spare room which was the company's World Headquarters and then enter a garage which was of course inventory and shipping during our conversation she suddenly took out her watch just like the rabbit and said oo I'm late for a meeting with my accountant because I am selling my company on a walk that evening I told Mary Kay about it how we could grow this tiny little company that's in her bedroom in into something much bigger and maybe it would allow us to travel around the world making Maps well she stopped thumped me in the chest and said what are we waiting for let's buy it so we did who is your partner check where do you want to live check what do you want to do check only problem was we didn't have any money but did manage to plunk down a few grand and got the owner to finance the balance we moved it into our garage in our basement got up at 4 in the morning each morning to draw maps by hand and so we learned how to become map makers we do this over a light table on a very very cold concrete floor so let me stop here what if I I told you so far about being an entrepreneur you need to be willing to take a chance a risk but but a risk in terms of you researched it so it's not the same risk to you that maybe someone else sees you taking you have to figure out how to finance your business and you have to be ready to work long hours and you need to understand how a business Works once again what I learned at Stout directly applied to this business everything from printing technology you had a print Maps quality control I was going into the printers and and watching their quality and monitoring it and doing these press checks and everything uh I took marketing here at Stout uh in the manufacturing process flow had that nailed here at Stout but I had an MBA that was a biggie that really helped us also so we were getting successful our first year sales were $28,000 now what what's tuition here again so anyhow so so that was our our first year sales well we were booming and a few and we moved out of our uh basement and garage to two rooms above a Chinese restaurant a few years later however we continued to grow and we built two Office Buildings had a bunch of employees Innovative products Sterling reputation great customer service and we traveled around the world and probably to every National Park you can name we kayaked with humpback whales we walked with Caribou herds had close encounters with Wolves grizzly bears sharks I was even kicked by a kangaroo in Australia and twice dodged the charging moves we okay so we used to do these research trips for our Maps so that's when we saw all this right so we would we took 17 trips to Alaska we did a lot of maps in Alaska and um we would have a plane drop us off and say I'll pick you up in two weeks if the weather's okay so make sure you have enough food if I can't get into you we would clear gravel bars so Bush Pilots could come in with their planes and land on these gravel bars in the rivers to resupply us we played baseball at midnight above the Arctic Circle with Native kids and we visited schools and Clinics in the shadow of Mount Everest we developed trekking maps with the profits going to those same remote schools and Clinics in uh Nepal we provided knowhow and equipment and software to start Partnerships in Nepal and India we put our company to work for ideals that we believed in then as nonprofit board members and officers we worked with Inter City teens environmental groups hiking trail and land advocacy groups National Park conservation and education organizations International programs supporting young children in war torn countries and more War we had many firsts in the industry and we pioneered product production and customer service models we understood our job as supporting and preserving public lands while ensuring that visitors have a safe educational and fulfilling experience so we this still a small Enterprise when when you looked at the biggies in the mapping industry we had a growing great reputation but limited resources and we were wary of big Dame traditional map companies as well as the new guys on the Block like Map Quest and Google so we began to look for someone to acquire us someone to help further uh Propel Us in the direction that the map business was going it was our vision and and we wanted to do that we wanted to advance the map business we wanted someone that shared our values someone that cared about the environment was inter interested in national parks and someone with a quality reputation we decided that the perfect and Ideal Company was now now this is shooting for the moon you know but if you don't have a Target you're not going to hit anything right and you only hit what you aim for and so our Target was National Geographic National Geographic was arguably the most respected map publisher in the world and how about that for a dream huh so we needed to make ourselves attracted to them we're this little company in Colorado so how are we going to do that well first thing we did is we hired one of their employees it was an intern to set up our production workflow to align completely with their production map flow then we set out to create a database that we thought might be attractive to them and we did this by cooperating with a national park related nonprofit just up the street from National Geographic in Washington DC Next Step was to try to sell this database the National Geographic so I made the call and to sell it to him as a way of introduction we invited to lunch and oh by the way National Geographic CEO would like to join us we didn't know until then that National Geographic was actively looking for someone to help take their products from a membersonly sales model okay it used to be you couldn't buy a National Geographic map unless you were a member and they weren't in retail stores so they were trying to make a transition into retail to to the broad American public World public in addition their member of survey said that they love national parks so they wanted to increase their cooperation and coverage of national parks guess what we were deeply involved with just about every National Park you've ever heard of at multiple levels from ground level employees to superintendents and directors and Mary Kay my wife was the president of a National Park educational preservation and interpretive Association in fact when National Geographic CEO met with the director of the National Park Service he suggested that they get closer to us then I was president of the international map trade Association representing map Publishers map sellers you know the and and then government agency software developers and then the retailers and wholesalers in more than 55 countries so we had the park in our pocket and we had the retail end of it covered we aimed High and we were at the right place at the right time we were prepared here came the ball hit directly at us and we caught it we sold our company and signed the documents on the very same table that Alexander grah Bell John Wesley Powell and others sat around and conceived of the National Geographic Society two years later I was asked to head up National Geographics worldwide mapping group commuting to Washington DC from our home in you ready Winter Park Colorado and St John US Virgin Islands okay when in Colorado we commuted over a mountain pass and one very bitter cold winter morning we had a terrible car accident I put my arms around Mary just as we flipped over a guard whale hurdled upside down and backwards over a 40ft cliff and down a hill bouncing over large Boulders no screams no yells just the sound of the car smashing over the boulders and then crashing through the forest in a few seconds that seemed like ours we both waited to die we we knew it was the end and it was okay as we talked about it later we were buried upside down in deep snow our our car was packed with branches and snow I remember thinking we were going to suffocate as if in an avalanche we couldn't see out the windows amazingly neither one of us was injured and somehow we wiggled out a back window and Claw our way up in waste deep snow the state police told us that there had been two other accidents there in recent years we were the only survivors so why am I telling you this we were not meant to die it wasn't our time we relooked at our lives to confirm what was really important adversity and Calamity are part of life they're Crucible moments impossible to avoid don't wait for your moment to decide what is really important in your life do it right after you leave here I mean do it soon know what's really important okay students it's not easy being a student the balance maybe in my case Sports academics a job a relationship and maybe all kinds of other activities it's it's almost impossible to do right and it doesn't get any easier after you graduate the pressure is the same even if the responsibilities and activities are different job family night school kids are sick everything else and it's a juggling act and you have to make some com compromises and concessions so think about what is really important to you and it changes right it changes with your life at different stages of life but at this point in time what is really important to you and you still have all these things you need to do but what is it that you can't lose focus on so fast forward to 2004 I leave the best job I ever had I leave National Geographic to become an artist and Follow that dream of a 16-year-old kid I threw away my resume it no longer defined me I was now an artist I learned to paint again I painted small bright figurative work it was abstract work and they loved it in the Virgin Islands you know I used Caribbean colors and dancing women and uh but there had to be more I was not feeding my soul but it to it took a few years to recognize my voice my mission to find my voice well actually my voice found me and it was in the back of my head Whispering what good is is your art what does it really accomplish does it matter so I started to broadly explore victims Witnesses and survivors of War discrimination violence abuse bigotry addiction you name something and I was thinking I was painting it so viewers interpreted my work within their own subjective context related to their own experiences which is what I wanted but again the voice came back and said how can you honestly paint these you can't relate to all of these issues well I can't but I can relate to addiction not as a victim but as a witness and I know about stigma you see my sister Oden died 10 years ago she might still be alive if it weren't for prescription opioids and the stigma that are surrounds addiction so here's the deal with alcohol and drug abuse is it's never just one person that's impacted so the pain people people that I the faces that I paint which you can see in which direction is the gallery behind me okay if you go over there tomorrow for the opening those faces are those people the victims the witnesses and the survivors I found my mission and this was it with stigma families are embarrassed communities judged doctors are dismissive and users think they are not worthy or Worse evil stigma is a barrier to prevention diagnosis treatment and recovery so the first step to alleviating stigma is to normalize the discussion to get people to talk about it and that helps people understand that substance use disorders are a treatable medical condition not a moral failing and then you need to be able to tell people so that they understand where they can get help stigma became became my focus all my exhibits now are a forum for education and communication the place where you can come for the art but stay for the message so my sister o but you know to the millions of people affected I could be part of the solution many people have passionate reactions to my work they share their heartfelt stories some say they intend to get help or take the first step to finally start that intervention some think me simply for recognizing them I exist one moment sorry I'm having trouble with the connection please try again in a moment I exist I'm not alone so one r one woman wrote me and said after seeing a painting mine online that she knew I understood here and she wanted to die the next morning she looked at this very same painting and this time saw hope in the woman's eyes and she then understood that she too could have hope and she said to me you saved my life I believe in the power of art to help people and I am motivated to take it my art to the next level in this service now after saying all this you probably think okay so this is real common so so people will come into my show shows and they'll say oh we thought you were this morose dreary sick guy who painted these paintings and I go I'm not I'm not art is fun but there's a dichotomy there isn't it art is fun but I have a grave mission to tell you about and um uh that's my Miss but let me show you how much fun art is this is my [Music] grandson little ta there [Music] too so what's my message be joyful you know you can't always but try to do it all the time I I have a friend who says that her alarm goes off at 2 o'clock every day in the afternoon to tell her that that's her a moment to think of something to be grateful for think of that be joyful be grateful okay let's shift gears I want to return to Alice everything is changing so fast in Wonderland but Alice doesn't fully comprehend nor does she know how to deal with it choices are made without having the time to consider the options or unintended consequences for instance the White Rabbit determines that the best way to get Alice out of his house is to burn it down now now this sounds very much like some fears we have about artificial intelligence and unintended consequences and it's true that today we are getting our job done with what not that many years ago looked like magic the rate of change is impossible to keep up with we are developing technology that we don't understand faster than we can use it so in this uncertain fast changing environment when you just do not have the time you must live with the fact that there are not going to be optimal answers and sometimes you just do something you start something and you say you know I'm going to learn I'm going to get the answer while I'm doing this so no one really knows where this is going but I can tell you this that every one of your jobs that you go to after Stout are going to be affected by or augmented with or controlled by artificial intelligence it's not something to fear but it is a call to constant rethink what is possible to be smart and aware open to change so I read the other day that the halflife of today's college student who's not in Liberal Arts the halflife of someone coming out of a more technical degree halflife five years that says in five years 50% of what you've learned is going to be Irrelevant for your job and if you're in a technical field a computer engineer two and a half years and what's driving that right now is artificial intelligence so on one hand that seems spooky but on the other hand it can be a real opportunity but for me what it says okay I got one other thing all right who is the Bigg now those of you who know this don't I mean that I've told this already you've got to be quiet who is the biggest um uh hirer of liberal arts majors in this country who hires the most liberal arts people Apple computer so what are the skills they're looking for so I thought about this and I thought about my career trajectory into different jobs and uh what were the things that I might have used or could still use and here's some that come to mind if you're interested in reskilling and you're going to want to be interested in reskilling what are the things that help you translate transfer go into something adapt to a different career path and I'm not saying something real dramatic it could be exactly the chair you're in but it's going to be changing decision making problem solving planning information research and Analysis critical thinking creativity and communication skills during covid our son and his wife had their hands full with work a second grader online school and a newborn so we decided to move from Boulder to Washington DC for two years we're since now back in uh Boulder and and our son and his family are in the area as well we had a small apartment I had 300,000 people following me on social media I didn't have any room to put in a a studio so I started doing digital work so I created new art presented podcasts presentations and participated in discussions all around the world now this new art uh it's totally done on my iPad but it starts with very very very early images of pain paintings like you saw up here and you'll see over in the gallery maybe a day after I started working on them and I might work on them for another month but I took those images took them into my iPad learned a bunch of software and started recreating them so you'll see them over there I like to say that when I paint that a drip may be random but what I do with it is not and so that really applies in life our life experiences and challenges how you react what you do with the challenges that come your way is what's really important because we can't always plan even though I'm telling you you should but it doesn't always work out that way so I am grateful that I have had several opportunities to work with kids um about art and one time I I was uh teaching art at a local school um 1 through 12 and they asked me to teach the first and second graders so what do you do with first and second graders I didn't know so I thought we would learn to paint like my dog Frank and of course it's very simple dogs don't know how to color inside the lines and they never they they never Ed the wrong color they use the opposite color so instead of red they use green and so forth and and so it was a great way to learn the color wheel so this is uh Frank he's learning how to paint getting ready to do a painting in my studio so I um put up this painting that Frank did first and second graders they're they're sitting on these steps looking at me and they say in unison no Frank didn't do that Jackson Pollock did that is true I couldn't believe it so that said something about schools so any know some parents would show up look at their child's art and say to them you got to keep the color inside the lines and uh why is your grass red so what is the takeaway we teach kids the color inside the lines than expect them as adults to to think outside the box remember that okay in A Farewell to Arms Hemingway waxes on the courage to take risks making you vulnerable but according to you might remember him you guys know Joe Walsh the rock guitarist Eagles James Gang he said no one ever became a legend in their parents' basement so get out there take a chance share your vision share your skills share your art share your music share your ideas color out Outside the Lines be vulnerable I'm skipping ahead because I got very verbose there so okay when you are that vulnerable person and you are sharing your ideas the more indifferent your vision is the harder you're going to have to sell it to other people people that are hardwired to oppose change so have empathy be patient but persistent and persuasive learn to communicate find out what really makes you happy and really important and do something about it don't waste time on the trivial if but if it's important do your best there's a Yiddish saying every time you make a plan God laughs things don't always go according to plan and maybe it just means that you need to fine-tune adjust and adapt but sometimes you have to put it aside and head off in another Direction the trick is trying to figure that out okay I can boil the takeaways from the last 30 minutes down to eight words explore adjust persevere empathize contribute connect risk Excel with the caveat that life is never a straight path and never without a fork in the road never underestimate yourself the quality of your life depends on what you expect of yourself so dream great dreams set high goals you have choices make them you have opportunities seize them thank you [Applause] so I left five minutes for questions and I will stick around so my next um uh event isn't for an hour so I'm happy to continue to talk but anyone who has a question I see some mics are out there so I'm uh I'm set for you anybody ready with a question I can bring the mic to you what's your next trip my next trick trip trip trip um New Zealand for three weeks there's a question talk as an arti where is selfed y yep okay so that started really when we um had our own business the mapping business in our basement so we had to do that you got up at 4 in the morning and then when I went to work for National Geographic it's it was a very regime uh uh uh reg regim reg company and I was told by my boss who was the president he said I want you to be the bureaucracy Buster I want you to be able to show people how they can have new and different ideas and they don't have to be you know you don't have to follow all the same rules which caused all kinds of grief with the people that were following all the rules but that was what we were told to do so we were new products driven you know we were traveling a lot we were we're talking to people we and it it does take long hours so we we were spending long hours there as well but then as an artist you know the deal with art is just like going to work uh you have to paint and how do you create I mean it's not a a silver bullet or or a lightning bolt that says Ah I have this great idea some sometimes great ideas do come to you but more often than that you're painting and a drip goes a certain way or okay I use Bounty paper towels a lot that's big part of my art and if you see the art you'll see what I'm doing and I'll try something I I've taken garden hoses to my paintings and uh uh I used a power washer don't use a power washer because it goes right through the canvas it tears the canvas I learned that but the hose I can't use the power washer let's use the garden hose and so I'm always playing with things what happens if I put some sand on here and here I am not an abstract painter right I mean they're they're abstracted faces but but I'm a figurative paint artist and so you know I've got certain rules I've got a follow kind of but um you don't do that unless you're painting every day you know you come in in the morning and you turn on the right music and you say I'm going to do this today I'm GNA throw this paint on this I'm G to Splash paint so you know you still have to come in every day and what it was like is I would get on my bicycle and IID ride to my studio before it was in our house it was a switch the minute I got onto the bike my head went now you're an artist and now let's go up and paint another question yes I went to the gallery today yes wonderful that your artwork is really amazing I read your bio and it says you're colorblind yes and your artwork is so some of those paintings are so colorful can you please talk about that I'm color impaired and what that means is that I can't pass a color blindness test so you know those tests with the little dots you know and you say oh what number is this I can't read them and I want wanted to be a pilot uh uh you know just for fun and I I uh flew 50 hours I had all my solos in and I had didn't have my physical yet and I don't know why I waited to the very end passed all my tests I went in for my physical and they said no no no no you can't fly at night you can't fly in bad weather well then what was the sense of doing it so I well so I dropped it and it was great fun doing it but it was okay to drop it too I didn't want to crash and and so uh yeah and so it kept me out of that I I can't explain it so I I can okay so I I can look at a stop light and I can see red green and is it blue and and I I can see the colors on the on the stoplight but if a color is getting a little dim I can't and so when you're flying when you come in and it's dark there's lights on the runway and you probably don't know that unless you fly and they tell you if you're too high too low or just right I they're all gray to me so instructor goes hey hey hey hey you're coming in kind of low I go what you know it's gray it looks like it's okay so anyhow that that's my issue and it hasn't stopped me from painting okay great any other questions thank you oh oh here we go okay I've gotten to work with you this week um putting up the show uh but could you talk more about how you know the people that you're painting sure okay so in my show um they're all self-portraits and I like to think I know myself kind of so there's a lot of self-portraits equally there's a lot of women that have been painting their faces and I've been painting some of these people for 10 12 years or more and I tend to when I find a model that I can work with that I like it's because you know we have good conversation uh I don't ask my models to hold perfectly still because if if I need to um paint their lips I'll say stop talking you know and then then I can do that but then after that then you can continue talking and so there are people that I've met okay so I've met three of them in a local coffee shop so I'm in the coffee shop you get to know them and you either say um would you be willing to Poe for me and they already know I'm an artist they've been seeing me for years and they'll go yeah sure or I've been meaning to ask you if I could or and so it's it's typically with people typically people that I know and uh and they're up there on the in the gallery whichever direction that is again yeah and and by the way I I have no idea I know some people have maybe an issue with addiction but I don't ask and sometimes someone will volunteer something but here's the deal you all if you don't know you will know someone who has had an issue uh friend spouse it doesn't matter you will know someone who's a victim witness or a Survivor and as such then that makes you a witness anyone else okay thanks for com oh there we go hold hold on one more one more so what the M uh what's the most beautiful place you've ever visited well okay there's I I don't know that I can say one but I can tell you this oh I know it was the lunch line here in 1967 there is nothing like waking up in the morning crawling out of your tent and looking at Mount Everest I'll tell you that so there are so many beautiful places and you know we we see Beauty in so many so many places and so often it's unexpected you know and sometimes that's the best and sometimes it's not necessarily A a place but one of the things I learned about Nepal for instance is it was the people you know that had the lasting made the lasting impression on me it was just gorgeous you know I just anyone else oh there's another question the gallery opening reception is tomorrow from 4: to 6: p.m. at Furlong Gallery um I love how you emphasized being in the right place at the right time y was there ever a time where you could pinpoint I'm in the wrong place yeah when the car flew off the cliff yeah no and and I don't know I guess they don't come read to mind but you know you you learn lessons you know not what to do again right and say I'm not doing that again and uh you know it's and even things that I'm okay so so my wife and son and I walk into a small clearing like this so there's a grizzly bear s there and here's her cub and they're both feeding here's the three things you're not supposed to do with grizzly bears surprise them approach them when they're feeding and come between a s and a cup and we did that and and we're here to talk about it yeah oh the kangaroo that was that was a good one yeah and the only way I could get the kangaroo from stop kicking me was to kick it and then I thought if anybody sees me kicking a kangaroo what are they going to this guy's from National Geographic you know he's kicking a kangaroo so all right don't don't be afraid to come up to me thank you you a great audience no no you can have it I I don't need it anymore I hope I didn't hurt anyone

Channel: University of Wisconsin-Stout

Views: 131

Keywords: UW-Stout, College, UW, Wisconsin, Bachelor's, School, Campus, University Of Wisconsin-Stout (College/University), polytechnic university, applied learning, hands-on education, STEM education, art and design degree, STEM career, engineering degree, Cabot Executive in Residence Lecture, William Stoehr, National Geographic, National Geographic Maps, William Stoehr Art

Id: JW1v8iWGsBY

Length: 60min 30sec (3630 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 16 2024