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Sharing Memories With Prindle Wissler

Prindle Wissler
photo by Larry Johnson
Prindle Wissler

Tuesday April 12, 2011

By Larry Johnson

    I first met Prindle Wissler many years ago at Downer 4-H Camp in Sharon, Vermont, where she was the resident arts and crafts instructor for five summers, and I’ve often thought of her over the years as the singular, artistic influence in my life. Yes, I did cut my fingers with the knife and, yes, all of my carvings resembled sawdust, but Prindle introduced me, as well as hundreds of other kids, to a creative process that has stuck with me for the past nearly sixty years. However, in the interest of full disclosure, no one would ever mistake me for any kind of an artist.   

      In spite of her near blindness, Prindle still produces magnificent art, vibrant with color and design. Her house is a virtual gallery, displaying the work of a lifetime. The art housed there, however, is just a sampling of what she has produced over the better part of a century.

      Ninety-nine-year-old Prindle Wissler still pummels her students with one, never changing mantra: “Creativity is emotion,” she tells them. “It wells up from inside and demands to be expressed. Real art is not pretty pictures of bowls of fruit or vases of flowers. Art is messy. You learn from making a mess.”

     Prindle is an artist in the real sense of the word. She graduated from Skidmore College with a B.A. in Fine Arts and a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts from Columbia. She also did advance graduate work at the Universities of Florida and Michigan.

     Like many people who find grade school and high school less than stimulating, Prindle characterized her primary and secondary educational performance as something less than stellar. “In grade school,” she told me, “I was the dumbest kid in class. We were seated according to our grades. There were three of us who were always fighting for the last chair in the room.” Prindle has a great sense of humor.

     “I actually enjoyed school,” she admitted, “but liked recess best. I didn’t like homework at all and I didn’t take class work seriously. I absolutely hated math and I’m still terrible at it.”

     Sixth grade was something of a turning point. “I got one of my paintings put up on the bulletin board. It wasn’t very good but it motivated me to keep scratching away. I wasn’t very good at art in high school, either.” She explained that the art taught in high school was not inspired by the creative process. One was supposed to learn art by adhering to a formula.

     “Biology was not my favorite subject,” she told me. “My drawings were too creative.” Prindle was referring to the practice of requiring biology students to draw the inside parts of various animals---usually unfortunate frogs who had croaked once too often.

     Her high school grades didn’t improve. “I was bored,” she admitted. “I got Fs and Ds for the most part. My poor parents didn’t know what to do with me. I was given an IQ. Test and they discovered that there was some intelligence lurking there. So my parents decided that I would go to college. Somehow they got me admitted to Skidmore. My first year there was pretty much a continuation of my high school accomplishments, and the school suggested that perhaps I’d be happier doing something else. However, my mother insisted that they continue putting up with me and for some reason they did. I went back to school and little-by-little I began to see education differently, that there might be some value in it. It was only much later that I realized most of what I had learned was a waste of time.”

     Prindle graduated from Skidmore with a degree in Fine Arts, and went on to Columbia where she earned a Master’s Degree. “It wasn’t until I got away from academia that I really learned about art. In fact, I’m still learning.”

     After college Prindle started teaching art, first at Lyndon Institute, now Lyndon State College, then at Keene Institute in Keene, New Hampshire, which eventually evolved into Keene State College. For thirteen years she taught at Middlebury Elementary School.

     In 1935, Prindle met and married Ben Wissler. The two were introduced by a childhood friend, Lorraine Gage, who had grown up with Prindle back in Waterbury, Connecticut. Lorraine’s mother had been born and brought up in the Middlebury area and the family had, eventually, returned to Vermont. The two had kept in touch, however, and  Prindle spent vacation time with the Gage’s who had settled in Weybridge. It was during one of her visits that Prindle met the young Assistant Professor of Physics at Middlebury College. “At first I thought he looked silly with his little bow tie,” she told me, “but I soon got past that. He was a great teacher and a great husband.  I’m not sure what he saw in me but I was just plain lucky, I guess. So were his students. He was a tough teacher, and he didn’t put up with nonsense in class. He was demanding but he always went the extra mile for his students. After dinner he would often wander back up to the college to see if he could help someone with his or her homework. For forty years he taught at Middlebury and he never lost his dedication.”

     Neither has Prindle. Drawing upon her own early, negative experience with school helped her to become an excellent teacher. “Until I went to college I was always a mediocre student, at best, because I didn’t mimic what was taught. One should teach in a way that will draw out something original from the student.” That statement, I believe, sums up not only Prindle’s attitude toward art and learning but also her attitude toward life in general.

 


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