The Berry Street vanguard: Oettel, Fishman, and the golden era

1954 - 1970s

Oettel: Russell Oettel landed at the Fort Wayne Art School in 1954, and stayed to run it. His road was the generation's road: studies begun after the war on the GI Bill, a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering at Millikin in 1947, a master's in fine art from the University of Iowa, a couple of years working for the Wabash Railroad when painting would not feed a family, and then the teaching job that became a life. As the school's head he grew its library from about 1,600 books to more than 6,000 volumes; he lived across the street in a restored nineteenth century home whose showings of his students and friends gave it the unofficial name of the Floating Gallery; and he ended as Professor Emeritus of fine arts at the university the school merged into, forever, in his profile's words, a painter.

Fishman: Betty Fishman, printmaker first and worker in drawing, painting, cyanoprinting, and jewelry besides, studied at the old Fort Wayne Art Institute and at Penland and Arrowmont in the South. Her Fort Wayne standing is double: as president of the Fort Wayne Art School in the 1960s she helped carry it to a height some consider the golden era of Fort Wayne art education, and as executive director of Artlink, the nonprofit gallery housed since 1991 at 437 East Berry Street, a few doors from the school, she ran the city's artist-run space for years. The city proclaimed a Betty Fishman Day; St. Francis gave her an honorary doctorate.

The company: Around them the museum's own account of the school names the faculty the 2018 exhibition gathered: Don Kruse, the painter and professor Noel Dusendschon (whose name the sources also spell Dusenchon), and George McCullough, alongside the earlier instructors Clyde Burt and, in the exhibition's inclusion, John Ottis Adams. Kruse, Dusendschon, and Oettel were seen, in Fishman's profile, as a vanguard, the Three Musketeers of Fort Wayne art enterprise. When the school merged into Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne in the 1970s and the Berry Street era ended, that faculty is what the era is remembered by, and the museum's exhibition of November 2018 to February 2019, "1026 West Berry Street: The Fort Wayne Art School," was their reunion in public.

Sources:

1. Whatzup, featured artist profile of Russell Oettel (landed at the Art School in 1954; the Millikin degree of 1947 and the Iowa M.F.A.; the Wabash Railroad years; the library grown from 1,600 to over 6,000 volumes; the Floating Gallery; Professor Emeritus at IPFW).
2. Whatzup, featured artist profile of Betty Fishman (the printmaking and the other media; the studies at the Fort Wayne Art Institute, Penland, and Arrowmont; the Art School presidency in the 1960s and the golden era; Artlink at 437 East Berry Street since 1991; the honorary doctorate and Betty Fishman Day; the Three Musketeers).
3. Fort Wayne Museum of Art, press release, "The Tale of the Fort Wayne Art School Comes to Life at FWMoA" (14 November 2018) (the 2018-2019 exhibition and the instructors it gathered, including Adams, Burt, Kruse, McCullough, Dusendschon, Fishman, and Oettel; the merger of the 1970s).