Recently, i saw there are now some short video clips of Mary Holmes on youtube. She was my art history teacher at UC Santa Cruz in the early 1970s. Before teaching at UCSC she taught at UCLA. Information can be found about her on the web. I don’t wish to attempt to “summarize” Mary here, or my thoughts about her; she was an extraordinary person on many many levels. But you can get an immediate sense of her from the youtube clips below. If you are intrigued, there is a book that illustrates her paintings, and includes her ideas on many topics. There is also a dvd of some lectures she gave in later life, after retirement, at her studio at home. For information on those, see the links at the very bottom of the post.

Mary was not just a unique teacher, she was a person who changed lives. Mary’s gift for speaking is hard to describe. When she started talking, worlds opened. The opposite of many charismatic speakers, she did not sweep you along with her ideals or ambitions, or even enthusiasms. Rather she was able to see and communicate what we have trained ourselves to ignore or un-see, in life and art. The engulfing simplicities and moral depths that we as human being participate in but may be only half aware of. She told me once, perhaps in wonder, how she was invited early on to give a talk on Indian Art to a group of Indian nationals. I forget what the group was. She boned up the night before, and selected slides. Afterwards, after the enthusiastic audience response, a man came up to her and said, “You understand us better than we understand ourselves.”

One of the youtube videos is from a very early educational tv program on art that Mary made for UCLA. When the first program aired, the phones at UCLA extension rang off the hook, and her classes became packed.

Book: http://www.maryholmesbook.com/
DVD: write woody at wboss@sbcglobal.net