Pencil Sharpener Poster | Tyler Hillis

Exhibition poster © Tyler Hillis (2015)

Above Poster by graphic designer Tyler Hillis for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

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Rudolf Arnheim, in a letter to Roy R. Behrens, 1993—

The physicist George Gamow was also an entertaining popularizer. He once told me a story of how with his wife and their baby daughter he visited the Leaning Tower of Pisa. As they climbed the steps, they noticed an increasingly musty smell, which they first attributed to the ancient walls of the building. Then, however, they began to suspect their little girl, and by the time they reached the top it was clear that she needed immediate attention. "And from the very place," explained Gamow, raising his arm and his voice dramatically, "where Galileo launched his experimental objects we also propelled…"  

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Kyler Smith

Exhibition poster © Kyler Smith (2015)

Above Poster by graphic designer Kyler Smith for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

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Mircea Eliade, Journal II 1957-1967. University of Chicago Press, 1989, p. 270—

Richard Stern arrived and told us some juicy anecdotes about two Rumanian "princesses" ninety years old whom he had met in Venice. One of them, drinking coffee, brought the cup too close to her face‚ and, Stern went on, the nose, probably restored with a wax cast, began to melt and finally fell into the coffee.

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Hastings Walsh

Exhibition poster © Hastings Walsh (2015)

Above Poster by graphic designer Hastings Walsh for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

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Carl Sandburg (recalling a ventriloquist act at the circus ), Always the Young Strangers (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1953), p. 191—

I had a dime and a nickel in my pocket. With the dime, the tenth part of a dollar, I bought a ticket. I went in and heard the ventriloquist and his dummy: "Will you spell a word for me, Danny?" "I'll try, what's the word?" "Constantinople." "Why do you tell me you can't stand on an apple?"

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Shay Petersen

Exhibition poster © Shay Peterson (2015)

Above Poster by graphic designer Shay Petersen for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

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Sam Kashner, When I Was Cool: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), pp. 33-34—

He [novelist William S. Burroughs] liked talking about being eight years old. At that age Burroughs had a secret hiding place under the back steps of his parents' house, a secret place where he kept a box, and in the box was a spoon, a candle, and some type of instrument for investigating the forging of hard metals for weapons. It was also around the time he said that he shot off his first gun and wrote his first story. It was called "Autobiography of a Wolf," a ten-page story about an animal who lost his mate and was killed by a grizzly bear. Burroughs said his parents had listened politely to the story. "Surely you mean biography of a wolf," he father had told him. "No," Burroughs insisted. "I mean the autobiography of a wolf." They sent him to Harvard.
 

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Sawyer Phillips

Exhibition poster © Sawyer Phillips (2015)

Above Poster by graphic designer Sawyer Phillips for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

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Alan Bennett, Writing Home (New York: Picador, 2003), p. 179—

I am reading a book on Kafka. It is a library book, and someone has marked a passage in the margin with a long, wavering line. I pay the passage special attention without finding it particularly rewarding. As I turn the page the line moves. It is a long, dark hair.

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Tricia Riley

Exhibition poster © Tricia Riley 2015

Above Poster by graphic designer Tricia Riley for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

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George Carlin as interviewed in David Jay Brown, Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 191—

We’re given many choices to distract us from the fact that our real choices have been diminished in number. Two political parties. Maybe three or four large banks now. Credit card companies, just a couple, a handful. Newspapers, reduced. Ownership of media, reduced, down to five or six big companies now. Big stock brokerage firms, reduced in number. All of these important things we have less choice. Then we’re distracted with these frivolous choices: 21 flavors of ice cream, 35 flavors of popcorn. You see specialty shops with 35 flavors of popcorn, like chocolate-walnut popcorn. These are absurd distractions from what we are doing to ourselves...

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Maris Price

Exhibition poster © Maris Price 2015

Above Poster by graphic designer Maris Price for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

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George Grosz, An Autobiography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 90-91—

It was in a café [in Berlin] that I first heard a jazz band. People called it a noise band. It was not a jazz band in the American sense, but more of a café orchestra gone crazy. Two or three musicians with saws and cow bells would parody the general melody with rhythmic interruptions. The conductor called himself Mister Meshugge and acted like a madman. He would pretend he had lost control, would break his baton to pieces and smash his violin over the head of a musician. At the end he would grab the bass and use it as a weapon in the ensuing battle, finally throwing the splinters into the audience that screamed with delight and threw them back. Throughout the performance waiters kept on serving the musicians more beer and drinks, increasing the general gaiety. Meschugee would grab instruments from the hands of the musicians, and sing and dance. Suddenly he would jump onto the piano, pretend he was a monkey, scratch himself, grab a large glass of beer to toast the audience, but then, quick as a flash, pour it down one of the trumpets. The audience was convulsed with laughter.

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Samuel Skvor

Exhibition poster © Samuel Skvor

Above Poster by graphic designer Samuel Skvor for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

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Michael Ondaatje in Robin Robertson, ed. Mortification: Writers’ Stories of Their Public Shame (NY: HarperCollins, 2004), p. 129—

A well-known American novelist, after her successes, was invited back to her high school. They had put on the dog for her and she had therefore put on the dog for them. She dressed well and stood up at the lectern to give her formal speech about writing, the arts, culture, education—all the noble things writers never talk or think about when they are not on panels or speaking publicly. It was a full auditorium.

Halfway through the talk she began to feel sick and, knowing she was soon going to throw up, announced in a calm voice that she had left a few pages of her speech offstage, in her bag. She walked off slowly and as soon as she was out of sight ran to the bathroom and threw up noisily. She had been doing this for about a minute when someone came into the bathroom to tell her that the lapel mike was still on. 
  

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Molly Watson

Exhibition poster © Molly Watson 2015

Above Poster by graphic designer Molly Watson for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

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David Attenborough Life on Air (London: BBC Books, 2002). 

[During a live interview on BBC, Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz agreed to appear on camera, unrehearsed, with a greylag goose. Moments later,] a keeper from the London Zoo walked on to the set carrying a goose which he put down on a low table that stood between the professor and myself. The goose, naturally enough, was somewhat perturbed at suddenly being thrust under the bright televison lights and began to flap its wings.

“Komm, komm, mein Liebchen,” said Konrad, soothingly, putting his hands on either side of the goose’s body so that its wings were held folded down. He was holding it so that its head was pointed away from him. This was sensible in that he was not then within range of the goose’s beak which it showed every wish to use, if it got the chance. But that, of course, meant that its rear was pointing towards the professor and the goose, in the flurry, squirted a jet of liquid green dung straight at him.

“Oh dear dear,” said Konrad. “All over der trouserz.” He released the goose, which flapped off the set and was neatly fielded by its keeper, took out his handkerchief and carefully wiped his trousers clean. Then, finding his handerchief in his hand, in his embarrassment, he promptly blew his nose on it.

He completed the interview with a green smear down the side of his face…

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Heidi Schmidt

Exhibition poster © Heidi Schmidt 2015

Above Poster by graphic designer Heidi Schmidt for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

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Bernard Wolfe, Memoirs of a Not Altogether Shy Pornographer (Garden City NY: Doubleday and Company, 1972), p. 157—

[There is a Law of Laws] that says, it’s not the paycheck you get that determines the value of the work you do, it’s the inspired and organized energy you put into the project, the invention, inner direction, personal thrust; no matter what payroll you’re on, the best payrolls are your own, the best jobs are free-lance. That says, the difference between those who do and those who get done to and in is what’s hungered for, the life on your feet or the life flat on your back. That says, there are the active ones, the makers; then there are the passive ones, the made. That says, work ethic be damned, what we’re talking about is the nature and direction of hunger, whether your need is to stiff the world a little or be steamrollered.

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Tad Klenske

Exhibition poster © Tad Klenske 2015

Above Poster by graphic designer Tad Klenske for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

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Bernard Wolfe, Memoirs of a Not Altogether Shy Pornographer (Garden City NY: Doubleday and Company, 1972), p. 47-48—

Paradox: the more you comb through your insides the less you come up with to write about. Besides, there’s more to look at out there than in here, and it’s less fogged over. You’ve go to learn more from three billion people than from one, it’s a matter of arithmetic. Again, it’s the writers who keep their eyes on the world about who tell us the most about themselves. What’s a man after all but his vision? Blinders and all? What’s he going to convey to us about his vision if he keeps it trained on his own insides, which he’ll never see? But I suppose every writer has to do this me-myself-and-I softshoe one time out, to show how versatile he is and that he hasn’t got two left feet.
   

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Amber Claus

Exhibition poster © Amber Claus 2015

Above Poster by graphic designer Amber Claus for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

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J.J. Oppenheimer, quoted in Robert Bruce Williams, ed., John Dewey, Recollections (Washington DC: University Press of America, 1970), pp. 123-124—

At the dinner table one evening [in the 1920s at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, at the college president’s home], our famous guest [Count Hermann Keyserling] suddenly asked all of us who in the American scene would make a distinct contribution to culture in the next fifty to one hundred years. A number of nominations were made. When it came my turn, I said “John Dewey.” At that, the huge (rather tall than huge) Count said: “I met John Dewey last week at my lecture at Columbia University. Surely that ‘little shrimp’ couldn’t add anything to human knowledge.”…Later by several weeks, Time magazine had a short article on the Count’s departure in which a reporter asked him what three things had the United States [contributed] to civilization. The Count replied: “Jazz, skyscrapers and John Dewey.”  

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Rachel Bartholomay

Exhibition poster © Rachel Bartholomay 2015

Above Poster by graphic designer Rachel Bartholomay for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

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John C. Thirlwall, quoted in Robert Bruce Williams, ed., John Dewey, Recollections (Washington DC: University Press of America, 1970), p. 157.

In 1932 I was an English graduate student at Columbia [University]. Ashley Thorndike was then Chairman of the English Department, and every graduate student took his Shakespeare course, which [began] at 2:00 pm in a lecture room holding over one hundred [students], on the sixth floor of Philosophy Hall. One day, promptly at 2:00 pm, Professor [John] Dewey shambled in, sat down at the desk and proceeded to read a long list, marking absent each one, since there was no reply from a crowded room. At 2:10 [Professor] Thorndike strode into the room, gawped at Dewey at moment, then tapped him on the shoulder, saying: “John, you are one flight up.” None of us laughed as Thorndike proceeded to read the proof sheets of his Shakespearian Comedy.  

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Reilly Stratton

Exhibition poster © Reilly Stratton 2015

Above Poster by graphic designer Reilly Stratton for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

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Ginu Kamani, “Code Switching” in Meri Nana-Ama Danquah, ed., Becoming American: Personal Essays by First Generation Immigrant Women (New York: Hyperion, 2000), p. 99—

I grew up surrounded by big, dark, animated eyes capable of conveying the greatest subtlety. Recently I was reminded again of the exquisite power of Indian eyes during a Satyajit Ray retrospective. As I watched his films, I realized what one of my biggest confusions must have been as a young immigrant to the US—my American peers appeared cold even when trying to be friendly. I depended so much on eyes to magnify both silent and verbal transmissions, that communication with my American peers often left me in a dissatisfied limbo. I had to adjust to a different sort of communication, all talk and less than expressive glances.

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Dallas Guffey

Exhibition poster © Dallas Guffey 2015

Above Poster by graphic designer Dallas Guffey for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

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Violette de Mazia, quoted in Robert Bruce Williams, ed., John Dewey, Recollections (Washington DC: University Press of America, 1970), p. 9.

[American philosopher John] Dewey’s observations on art were sometimes characterized by a remarkable spontaneous insight. On one of his frequent visits to The Barnes Foundation during Dr. [Albert C.] Barnes and I were looking at the collection with him, he stopped in front of a [painting by Paul] Cézanne, The Bibemus Quarry, and said with the air of tossing off an incidental remark, “If you were to explode a bomb in the middle of this landscape you would have a [painting by Chaim] Soutine.”

Pencil Sharpener Poster | Joseph Burgus

Exhibiti0n poster © Joseph Burgus 2015

Above Poster by graphic designer Joseph Burgus for an exhibition of student posters about historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa.

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George A. Wolf, Jr., quoted in Robert Bruce Williams, ed., John Dewey, Recollections (Washington DC: University Press of America, 1970), pp. 172-173—

[In 1947 or 1948, George A. Wolf, Jr. was a young physician in New York. One weekend he was asked to take the emergency calls of one of his professors, who was John Dewey’s doctor. The American philosopher, who was in his late eighties] had gone for a walk on Fifth Avenue, slipped and hurt his shoulder. I was called to see him which I did in his apartment. The old gentleman was literally quivering in pain and his new wife was most apprehensive…I am an internalist but I remembered from medical school orthopedics a maneuver, somewhat old fashioned, said to reduce such dislocations occasionally.

The patient was in so much pain that I decided to try the maneuver. It consisted of taking off my shoe, sitting on the foot of Dr. Dewey’s bed, placing my sock covered foot in Dr. Dewey’s armpit, grasping his hand and forearm on the affected side and gently pulling…Suddenly, there was a feeling that the bone had slipped back into place. My memory tells me that it was a loud satisfying crack but my biological training tells me that both Dr. Dewey and I were so relieved, he of his pain and I of my apprehension, that the event was really very quiet. He stopped shaking, looked at me gratefully, and smiled a little smile. He said the appropriate thank you’s, as did his wife.

The amusing part was that as I put my foot in the suffering gentleman’s armpit (axilla), I said, “Pardon me, Dr. Dewey.”  

Pencil Sharpener Poster Exhibit Ends Today

Poster © Roy R. Behrens 2015

Above Poster for an exhibition of graphic design student posters about historic pencil sharpeners, from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa. The exhibit ends today.