Studios, Schools: 2-Way Streets : DARRYL CURRAN / CAL STATE FULLERTON

Why do many artists teach? Mostly because only the superstars make a comfortable living selling their work. But some artists prefer to do graphic design, build packing crates or work at administrative jobs. Presumably those who opt for the classroom view their occupation as more emotionally and mentally rewarding than other types of employment.

Are there moments of synchronicity between life in the classroom and life in the studio? Do conscientious teachers slight their artwork or find shortcuts that yield less venturesome results? We posed such questions to three intensely committed artists at different stages in their careers and with varying degrees of pedagogical involvement. Their comments reveal both a deep ambivalence about teaching and a recognition of its hard-won moments of insight and personal satisfaction.

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In 1978, when Darryl Curran was 43, his work was a last-minute inclusion--too late for the catalog--in “Mirrors and Windows: American Photography since 1960,” a seminal exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

More recently, Curran’s low-key images of everyday objects--employing photographic and printmaking techniques--have appeared in a number of shows surveying modern art in California, including “Proof: Los Angeles Art and the Photograph, 1960-1980,” organized by the Laguna Art Museum, “Lost and Found in California: Four Decades of Assemblage Art” at G. Ray Hawkins Gallery in Los Angeles, and “Photography in California: 1945-1980” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

But as chairman of the art department at Cal State Fullerton, Curran--who founded the photography program there in 1967--has little time to make new work.

He still teaches one class and is on campus five long days a week. “I can go through an entire day and just be at meeting after meeting after meeting,” he said. “I’ve changed the way I work to suit the situation.”

For the past few years, Curran’s output has been limited to a few dozen digital collages of objects scanned into a computer and printed by Nash Editions, a workshop in Manhattan Beach.

When he has a little time at home in Los Angeles, he may do some “remedial things,” as calls them, like organizing slides and labeling them.

“While doing that kind of work, you can think, ‘Oh, gosh, I forgot about this negative’,” he said. “Or I look down and think, ‘Oh, here’s this twig that has cat food spilled over it. That looks pretty good.’ So I have a catalog of potential things that are just stacking up.”

When he goes to Nash Editions, where he’ll book a block of three or four hours of studio time, “I lay everything out, and I might have an idea or I might not. If I don’t, I’ll say, ‘Well, let’s just start with this twig. And I place it on the platen. Now let’s see. Here’s a sweater that has a different value of green in it. Let’s see if those two greens will work together.’ ”

Curran likens his time with the scanner to the “decisive moment” of photography lore, the notion that the photographer must lie in wait for an optimum arrangement of visual information. (With the scanner, Curran joked, “it’s [more] like the decisive 10 minutes.”)

“Whereas people [working in other forms of photography] are spending two hours or two weeks trying to get that [image] down,” Curran said, “I just do it quickly. Which is probably a good decision for me, because if I had more time I’d probably noodle with it to death.”

On the other hand, he admits, if he had more time, he might be investigating other ways of working. “I’m looking forward to that when I retire, probably in two more years,” he said. “Putting myself in a disciplined situation and seeing how much work I can complete each day.” He laughed ruefully. “If I can afford it.”

Long known as an inspiring instructor--students inevitably recall his encouragement to think beyond just making pictures--Curran teaches photography class at Cal State Fullerton. He finds that aspect of his job rewarding, in some unexpected ways, he said.

“A teacher-artist can be struggling with something and not finding the answer,” Curran said. “And he’ll walk into a [student] critique one day, and on the wall will be the key. It’s not like stealing ideas. I’m just talking about some little thing, like seeing that green dotted line”--Curran gestures toward a painting on the wall of the department conference room--”and thinking, ‘Why didn’t I think of it?’

“The other aspect is, when you’ve been teaching long enough, you find out you have more ideas than you’ll ever be able to execute. So you’ll see a student struggling and it reminds you of something you’ve done, and you give the student your idea--not the whole idea but a potential key element to the student’s dilemma.

“It may work or it may not, or the student may choose not to use it. But it also unburdens you. Because that’s an idea you know you don’t have to worry about.”