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Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2018
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EXHIBITION
Showcasing his passion where it began
Eric Zamora • The Collegian
Doug Hansen showcases comics he created for The Daily Collegian as a student in the 1970s in the Conley Art Gallery on Jan. 19, 2018.
By Eric Zamora
EXHIBIT
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@ehhreec
oug Hansen sits surrounded by his illustrations bound in books and hung on the concrete walls of his second floor office in the Conley Art building. The art professor, illustrator and author is getting ready to showcase his work in an exhibition, titled “Bookends,” starting Thursday at Fresno State’s Conley Art Gallery. His art career began there more than
JOURNALISM By Christian Mattos @ChrisssyMattos
Two veteran journalists from The Fresno Bee are transferring their expertise from the newsroom to the classroom at Fresno State. Jim Boren and Donald Munro have begun teaching media, communications and journalism (MCJ) courses at the university. Their first day teaching was Jan. 16. Boren recently retired as executive editor of The Bee after nearly 50 years in the business, Munro served as one of The Bee’s top cultural arts writers for 16 years. Boren and Munro will offer hands-on, professional experience as well as new perspectives from which students can learn, said MCJ professor and chair-elect Betsy Hays. “I think it’s always wonderful when you look at a student’s transcript at the end of
“Bookends” Conley Art Gallery Jan. 25 - Feb. 22 Gallery Hours: 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.
40 years ago. “When you think of bookends as being these solid supports at both ends with a bunch of creative stuff in the middle, that’s one way of looking at [the exhibition],” Hansen said.
“Bookends” is separated into sections, each devoted to a period in Hansen’s life and the work he created. Included in the exhibition are the political cartoons he drew for the Daily Collegian as an art student, where his career got its start. “At that time there was a lot of unrest because especially in the English faculty, a lot of them were speaking out against the administration here on campus and they had a protest after they were locked out of their offices by President [Norman A.] Baxter,” Hansen said.
The unrest at Fresno State at the start of the 1970s mirrored the overall political climate at the time and ultimately influenced the kind of work Hansen did for the Daily Collegian. He was occasionally given a full page dedicated to whatever comic he decided to create for that day. “They didn’t tell me what to draw,” Hansen said. “It was like ‘fill up the page;’ That’s all they cared about.” One of his first comics for the Daily Collegian was titled “1984.” It focused on what the campus might look like years ahead from the 1970s, focusing specifically on what it would look like for minority students, the issue of freedom of speech, and commenting of the governor of California at the time, Ronald Reagan. Hansen has collected the comics over the years and will showcase them alongside his other works. After graduating, Hansen went to work for The Fresno Bee as their newsroom artist and as an author and illustrator of children’s books. “I had a feature [in the Fresno Bee] called ‘Fresno Sketchbook’ and I would drive around, draw pictures of whatever was interesting to me, talk to people or research it, and then hand-letter whatever it is I found out about,” Hansen said. Alongside his features, which were later collected into two books, he illustrated stories in The Bee for David Mas Masumoto, a local author. Those illustrations were also collected into two books. All of these works come together in “Bookends,” showing the progression of an young, unrefined and “immature” Hansen to who he is today. “Illustration can be very powerful and I hope people will come to some appreciation, not just look at the artwork but think about how the pictures work with the text in every circumstance to create something special which is an illustration,” Hansen said.
For years they brought us the news. Now they’re teaching it
Jim Boren
Former Executive Editor of The Fresno Bee
Donald Munro
Former Cultural Arts Writer for The Fresno Bee
their time here that they’ve had a chance to take [classes with] many, many brilliant minds,” Hays said. “They’re both very interested in giving back and helping train the next generation of journalists.” Boren is teaching two sections of the upper division writing course MCJ 102W, which is a hands-on news reporting course. As a Fresno State alumnus and MCJ graduate, Boren said he is glad to give back to a program that was impactful to him. “[Students] are going to learn reporting skills and writing skills, so my goal at the end of the semester is to have them being
See JOURNALISM, Page 3