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Notes - Address of Olive Rush at Earlham College
June 13, 1947

   No happier thing than to sing praise of friend. Guided earliest efforts. Encouraged the dreams of youth. It was John Elwood Bundy who started me out. Sixteen. Indiana farm. The only three months on this lovely campus. Breathless experience. 
   Studio. Copying. Encouraged me to work from nature. Flowers, corn, bananas. 
   Encouraged me to go East, to seek the best masters. Told me of painters. Thoughtfulness of others. Reverence for his Art. Modesty. Finding in his art the joy of life. Painting better and better. Renoir. Exhibition here full of rich sonorous color - organ tones in particular in paintings from 1910 to 1920, with each canvas expressing its own mood with boldness and with fresh pigment. His deep love of nature shining forth at last, when he had overcome the difficulties of his medium. 
   The outgoing spirit of unselfishness of John Elwood Bundy's should set a partern for the art centre as it is being conceived by those who are working for the healthy growth of this College. An Art centre should be not an end in itself, but a reaching out, a spreading forth of vital cultural influences. All the arts included in its development. America is blossoming with various such regional centres. Colorado Springs - East - West - everywhere. One comes to my mind, not so different from Earlham, in that it is a small coeducational, liberal arts college that stresses spiritual values in a material world... Black Mountain College in North Carolina is now, yet astonishing in its achievement, and the impress it has made not only on its own region but in educational circles all over America. I am told that individuals in the school create courses and classes through felt need and interest, and that loving the work, the quality of study rather than the number of courses, tells in the development of taste and imagination.