it’s in the details: remembering dave drewek

It’s In The Details

Spreading his wings on a school trip to Italy.

SPREADING JOY. UNDERSTANDING THE HUMOR INHERENT IN LIFE. BEING THERE FOR SOMEONE IN NEED. THESE WERE THINGS AT WHICH DAVID DREWEK, PRAIRIE’S FIRST ART TEACHER, EXCELLED.

Look at the aging man’s slender build and balding scalp. The blue suit. The spectacles dangling from curled fingers. The look on his face, a distant gaze slowly succumbing to the grin growing beneath the surface. And those eyes. That blue. A hint greyer than the suit, like cold steel or a piece of wet slate you might rescue from the Lake Michigan shore on a perfect summer day. This meticulousness is what makes the portrait so profound. If life is in the details, then it’s best to apply the little ones liberally, enhancing our existences, and our paintings, with style and class and individuality.

The picture of John Mitchell, Prairie’s first Headmaster, hangs in the Performing Arts Circle on a red brick wall just outside – you guessed it – the John Mitchell Theater. Displayed here since 1978, you’ve almost certainly walked past it. However, have you ever stopped for a closer look? Ever leaned in close, nose inches from the glass, to study the intricate brushstrokes used to create Mr. Mitchell’s hands and face?

Chances are, probably not. But this is how it sometimes goes with art. No matter how brilliant a piece, no matter how captivating, it can blend into the background if we’re not intentional about noticing its beauty.

“Dave’s style was like the old masters,” says Kevin Pearson, longtime Prairie art teacher. “He used these small brush strokes, did these layers. If you look at the John Mitchell – and I would look every time I passed – you can see it on the face and the hands. He did fifteen, sixteen layers, and that’s what Raphael and any of them would do. Tiny, tiny strokes.”

David Drewek, 1978. That’s the inscription at the bottom of the painting. As Prairie’s first art teacher and department chair, Drewek taught, inspired, and delighted TPS students from 1965-2001. In July, he passed away at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH, following a series of heart issues. He was 78. He was also, without a doubt, a man who enhanced his life with remarkable details.

Drewek’s “John Mitchell” has hung across from the Head of School’s office since its unveiling in 1978, the year Mitchell retired.

They tell the one about how he turned the art room into a magnificent haunted house every October, Prairie’s seniors scouring the city for the cardboard boxes they would use in its construction.

They tell stories about the school trips he would take with students to visit the famous glass blowing studio in Florence, Italy (more on this later).

There’s one about him showing up to a faculty meeting in his bathrobe and one about Dave’s Dating Service, the table he would set up in the Dining Room or SRC prior to a big dance to help match kids who wanted to attend but didn’t have a date.

At the risk of relying on an obvious and simplistic art pun in a piece about a beloved and complex art teacher, there are countless stories to help paint the picture of Dave Drewek.

In early August, Vicki Schmitz, Prairie’s current Art Department Chair, arranged a Zoom meeting to help collect some of those stories. Unable to gather for drinks and hugs and handshakes, Everett McKinney, Pat Badger, and Kevin and Chris Pearson met in cyberspace to remember a man who filled this place, and their hearts, with immense joy. Consider it catharsis in the time of a pandemic.

Back in the day when dances were formal, Drewek was there to help pair up students looking for a plus one. “I talked about this with Pat last summer, I thought: I should really fly out and meet this Dave fella,” said Schmitz. “And I’m sorry I never got that chance. But the memories I’ve heard of him are so fantastic, and I feel like it’s important he’s honored appropriately and that I know his legacy so we can maintain it and pass it along. It makes me sad when things get lost to history.”

Stories and laughter and lessons: this is how we should all judge the richness of our days. For an hour they come nonstop. Many of them emerging from the memory of a reverent-yet-eager Kevin Pearson. Listening to him talk, it’s obvious he’s a man who clearly understands how lucky he was to have known such a friend, mentor, and colleague.

He shares the one about the time when Tony Fruhauf, former Headmaster, questioned Dave about his attire, telling him he needed to wear a shirt and tie when visiting him in his office. “Dave said, ‘Well that’s fine, but then you need to wear a t-shirt and jeans when visiting me in the art room.’”

Next is the one about how, uninterested in patronizing the soda machine someone installed in the faculty lounge – the funds of which went towards new athletic uniforms – Dave called up a different beverage company, had another machine installed in the art room, and began using the money for art supplies. His idea didn’t last long.

“I don’t think he asked anyone,” said Pearson. “He just did it. That was Dave.”

There is a great Seinfeld scene where George Costanza is describing the zany stories of his life to a group of people tasked with assessing said level of zaniness. In closing, he says, “These stories are not embellished, because they need no embellishment.”

That was Dave Drewek. Authentic. Fearless. At complete comfort in his own skin.

“He was probably the only pied piper I know,” said Pearson. “He just drew people to him. He was friends with the Prairie parents. He was friends with their children. It was absolutely amazing to watch.”

“Dave was one of those rare people able to strike the balance between being an adult, and letting the child in him loose,” said Badger. “I think that’s what really drew kids to him. He could be funny, but he could also just really be there for you if you needed someone.”

And need him they did. The co-workers. The kids. They needed his wit and his humor. His compassion. His originality. They needed his trust.

Drewek was integral in helping redesign the art room following Prairie’s fire in 1975.

MAKING THINGS RIGHT

There are two more stories important to tell.

In 2015, Prairie hosted a variety of events in celebration of the school’s 5oth anniversary. One of those was a reception at Fortaleza Hall in downtown Racine. “It was probably the last time I saw him,” remembered Everett McKinney. “And I recall a young man approaching me, he was in the seventh grade when I came to Prairie in 1989, and we began chatting. He said, ‘I really came back to see Mr. Drewek.’ I asked him why, and he said, ‘When I was in Upper School, I really, really wanted to go on the trip to Italy, but I didn’t have the means to do so. I raised some of the funds, but for the most part Mr. Drewek took care of my trip. It’s the only time I’ve been out of the country. He made that possible.’ I’m sure there are other kids with stories like that, of Dave making things right for a kid if they were wrong, but I was just really touched by that.”

In fact, there is another story like that.

On the evening of January 17th, 1975, Prairie was ravaged by a fire. The inferno destroyed not just the Primary School classrooms, but also the art room, Dave’s beloved space, the place where he created and connected. PRAIRIE SCHOOL BURNS, was the headline the next morning in The Journal Times.

“It was devastating,” remembered Pat Badger. “It destroyed the Primary School. It destroyed the art room. It started there with some kind of hot pot someone forgot to unplug. There was an investigation, of course. And I believe Dave had an idea about who forgot, but that was just not something we talked about. It wasn’t mentioned. I don’t ever recall a lot of attention being put on ‘Who did this?!’ We just rebuilt and we went on. And I think a lot of that was Dave.” Call it a safe haven. A place to escape Prairie’s rigorous academic demands. On any given day, Schmitz and her fellow art teachers welcome hundreds of students into their classrooms. And whether it’s blowing glass in the David M. Drewek Glassblowing Studio, or working on a still life in the upper level, art – and the places and spaces where it’s created – have always offered Prairie’s students a place to feel safe, to express themselves.

“Certainly, the art room has always been a place where kids find refuge,” said Badger. “And that’s still true today.”

True today, just as it was in 1965, when a man born and raised in Racine, WI, a man with a passion for Scandinavian furniture and freshly popped popcorn, was given the opportunity to build an art department, to dream.

When painting with oils, the technique of layering is used to enrich depth and deepen atmosphere, the extra detail adding texture and providing nuance. It’s done to bring a piece to life. Whether painting or blowing glass or helping students build a haunted house, Dave Drewek was a man of nuance, of layers, and all of them worked harmoniously to form a beautiful, unforgettable existence, one worth remembering, one worth leaning in for a closer look every chance we get.

Classrooms, commons, hallways: no Prairie space was safe from Drewek’s antics.