Project honoring Ken Kesey

Furthering art

A project honoring Ken Kesey is dedicated at his alma mater,
Springfield High School

http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/news/cityregion/20313516-57/story.csp

By Emily Smith
The Register-Guard
Sep 18, 2009

SPRINGFIELD ­ Geneva Jolley has accumulated a library of her son Ken
Kesey's works ­ she has a copy of his two best-known novels in every
language in which they were published around the world.

Even after all these years, she hasn't grown tired of celebrating her
son's work. She was there, for example, when students and teachers at
Springfield High School dedicated a Kesey-inspired piece of artwork
Thursday, which was Ken Kesey's birthday.

The stained glass piece, featuring Kesey's renowned "magic" bus and a
quote from his novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," will reside
in a hallway marking the entrance to the school's second-floor
language arts wing.

The famed author, a 1953 Springfield High alum, died in 2001. He
would have been 74 this year.

The 70-inch-by-17-inch glass piece was completed last year by three
students under the instruction of art teacher Karen Perkins. The idea
emerged after the students who hung around her classroom all the time
expressed an interest in doing a public service art project, Perkins
said Thursday.

The students had little experience in glass work when they began, but
after months of labor, they are now quite familiar.

One of the students, Tori Gatlin, said the piece required many trial
runs as they sought to master new techniques.

"We did a lot of work with fusing, which not even Ms. Perkins had
done very much of," she said. "It was stressful, but it was worth it."

Michael Silva and Jared Allison joined Gatlin in producing the piece.

Packed in among a hall full of teenagers standing
shoulder-to-shoulder, Jolley beamed and laughed Thursday as she
listened to her grandchildren and friends tell anecdotes about her
son's colorful ways.

Her son's legacy lives on in high school classrooms nationwide, with
his classic novels "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Sometimes a
Great Notion" often assigned in English classes.

"She loves it," said her granddaughter, Sunshine Kesey, about the
Kesey legacy. "She's very proud of Ken and his achievements."

Sunshine Kesey said the family doesn't usually commemorate her dad's
birthday, but this year she wanted to do something special for it.
When she and her brother, Zane Kesey, heard about the high school's
art project, they thought their dad's birthday made a perfect day for
the dedication.

"It's wonderful to see it here at Springfield High," she said. "It
was always important to him to pass on the idea of free thought to
youth. I know this would tickle him."

Zane Kesey rolled up to the school Thursday morning in a replica of
Ken Kesey's renowned "Further" bus, covered inside and out with
psychedelic paintings. Kesey first rode the original bus
cross-country with the Merry Pranksters to help promote the release
of "Sometimes a Great Notion."

Students crowded around the replica bus during the lunch hour,
examining every intricate inch.

The original bus still rests on the Kesey family farm in Pleasant Hill.

Asked to speak at the high school every few years, Ken Kesey would
make appearances and give dramatic readings, Sunshine Kesey said. But
not one to censor himself for the sake of youth, "he'd end up getting
in trouble for something."

While many of her peers read her father's work in high school,
Sunshine put off reading "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" at 18 and
didn't tackle "Sometimes a Great Notion" until age 30.

Finding the novels on the shelves of homes wherever she went, it was
hard not to recognize the reach of her father's work. The
best-sellers have been translated into more than 10 languages.

"If people in Czechoslovakia are reading it, you figure it must be
pretty good," she said with a laugh.

.