Elon University art department professor reflects on homelessness ...

Hassell speaks to a group of Periclean Scholars in Alamance Building. Photo by Stephanie Butzer, senior reporter.

He is a white male from a middle-class family. He grew up in a suburb of Chicago. He is a college professor. He photographs and studies coal-mining communities. He likes to read.

And he used to be homeless.

Ken Hassell, associate professor of art and art history at Elon University, has seen the worst of what life has to offer, including the consequences of poverty. Despite his struggles, he doesn?t consider himself a typical survivor of homelessness, a typical professor or a typical husband. There is no typical according to Hassell.

?You think of all the different identities,? he said. ?And within each one of those identities there are multiple possibilities as well. Identity is not one thing. It?s many things. We are many things. And those things are changing.?

Opening on a different beat?

Hassell, born in 1946, tasted the first sour flavor of categorical culture in high school. Cliques developed and it seemed like identities were set in stone. He did not fit into any of them. He was different and thought there was something wrong with him.

?I don?t know that I overtly really thought, ?What is my identity??? Hassell said. ?But I struggled with who I thought I was versus the norm out there.?

Hassell found companionship with some unusual men: the school?s greasers. The 20-year-olds rode motorcycles to the school from which they had not yet graduated. But Hassell came to appreciate them. They were different from the other ?normal? students, and so was he.

Even though Hassell had discovered a comfortable niche, the strains of schoolwork and socialization remained the same. He was not a great student, just barely graduating high school in 1964.

But Hassell?s love for literature helped him earn high SAT scores. He was admitted to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, but the experience was not what he expected. The structured learning and undisputed social norms dumbfounded him and he dropped out to partake in the anti- Vietnam War protests in the mid-1960s.

Money started to become a problem. Hassell tried driving cabs in Chicago to make a living. He appreciated the passengers who were willing to converse with him during the ride. But sometimes the job was horrible and produced a lot of anxiety.

Once, Hassell drove a cab with a broken brake. It took him half a block to come to a standstill, so he had to anticipate when he would have to pull over. Another time, the engine shut off as he was driving on Dan Ryan Expressway, a major highway in Chicago. Sometimes the cab worked fine, but the riders treated him like the dregs of society.

?You wouldn?t get fares or sometimes you?d get very difficult people,? Hassell said. ?People would objectify you because they were paying you and therefore you were just an object to fulfill their wishes.?

Living fully with nothing?

As a gangly 6-foot-1-inch, 120-pound man, Hassell moved to San Francisco in hope of finding a place he could fit in and find a job. He was incredibly poor and lived in transient hotel rooms. Even if a job was undesirable, Hassell accepted it to survive.

Most of the work he shouldered was physical labor. He loaded and unloaded tractor-trailers in 100-degree weather. He was a forklift operator. He assembled commercial sewing machines in a factory.

The manual labor didn?t bother Hassell ? he liked the workout. Nevertheless, the work did not fulfill his craving to make a change in the world. Each job seemed to be a failure, but he knew they were necessary for him to get by. Hassell began talking to his coworkers in order to make light of the uninspiring workdays.

?I liked the people I worked with,? Hassell said. ?They were common working people and I got to really know them and like them very much and later on, I would devote my work as an artist to that.?

Hassell also acquired a job throwing advertisements to people?s doors. Sometimes, he would walk around the financial districts of San Francisco. People struggled to see beyond his long hair and ragged clothes.

?Because I was poor, I had nothing and I looked that way,? Hassell said. ?The way people looked at me, I knew what they were thinking: I didn?t belong there. I was not wanted.?

But Hassell pushed past the disdainful people and continued working.

As he went from job to job, he realized he was becoming more resilient. The work also taught him he would be able to survive, no matter what the conditions were.

Many people were in the same bleak situation. Hassell loved to interact with interesting and unfamiliar minds. With each conversation, he learned more about the identity of an individual.

?I met people who were just really way out?there and quite strange to brilliant people who were on hard times,? Hassell said. ?A whole range of things.?

These conversations affected him for the rest of his life. He appreciated the people he met and was never tempted to place them into categories.

We all get help or can seek help. That?s a very important thing. That?s not a weakness, it?s a strength. -Ken Hassell, associate professor of art and art history

Over the edge of poverty

Finances hit an all-time low when Hassell was homeless for a year. He found work where he could and although this was a difficult time, he said he does not regret this period in his life. It became a very important time for him and he said he embraces the experiences he had.

?It taught me how to be very resourceful,? Hassell said. ?I had to find ways of existing.?

Hassell learned he would not perish if he did not have everything he thought he needed to survive. He had little shelter, food and water, but they were the true essentials and he said he was thankful to have them.

Homelessness taught Hassell that poverty was not just a lack of money and resources. It was a somber psychological experience where people did not respect him as a human being.

Hassell hit a stroke of luck when he was offered a job in the parts department at a Fiat dealership in Wisconsin.

One day, a woman came in with a Fiat Spider in need of repair. Hassell liked the way she talked to him and got her phone number off the repair order.

Her name was Annie.

Hassell dialed the number and asked if she would go out on a date with him.

?I must have sounded pretty creepy,? Hassell said. ?But six weeks later, we got a date to get married. And that was 37 years ago.?

After their marriage, Hassell assumed he would work at more attractive labor jobs. At the same time, he knew he would never fit into the world of a mainstream worker. Annie was a research scientist and was paid well.

The unconventional jobs Hassell took up were disappointing. He became very depressed because, yet again, he did not feel like he was making a difference in the world. Annie helped Hassell realize he had that potential, just like all the people around him.

With his wife?s encouragement, Hassell went back to school to pursue an art and teaching degree. While he was at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, the pair was very poor, even though Hassell worked part-time.

After his graduation, Hassell and Annie moved to Philadelphia, where Annie landed a job at Glaxo Smith-Kline. Hassell continued to work part-time.

In the summer of 1990, they arranged to relocate to North Carolina. Annie was offered a job at Glaxo Smith-Kline in Research Triangle Park in Raleigh. However, before they headed down south, they took a vacation to England for a couple weeks. Hassell said he cannot put his finger on why they were so attracted to England, but believes it has to do with the country?s people.

?Sometimes we can think we like to go places because they?re different, which is true, but I really like the English people,? Hassell said. ?Some people are very critical and describe them as aloof and unfriendly. I don?t find that at all. I like the English way.?

Hassell said in England he did not feel like he had to censor himself, like he did for most of his younger years. The people he met were open. Their culture was an instant fascination for Hassell.

However, Hassell had obligations in the United States. He knew it would be difficult to find a teaching job for artists in a university and started looking around for work. He had never heard of Elon University, but after interviewing to be an art professor, he was hired immediately by Clair Myers, dean of arts and humanities at the time. The couple moved to Hillsborough soon after.

Hassell has worked at Elon nine years part-time and 12 years full-time, leading to a 21-year career at the university. All of his classes, including the Global Experience and Photography as Social Critique, taught students how to view and understand people in a complex yet open way. He challenges his students to avoid making assumptions but supports them as they struggle to open their minds.

?He makes students feel like they have something to contribute and like they?re important to him,? said junior Caroline Hood. ?It makes students want to learn more from him.?

Hassell?s love for London led him to take a group of students on a Winter Term study abroad to the city for an ethnographic study of immigrant communities for nine years.

?When I?m there, I probably walk ten miles a day because it?s so wonderful to walk around and experience,? Hassell said.

Back at Elon, Hassell is as engaged in the school as the students are. The environment fits the dynamic atmosphere he has always searched for. He said his good friends here are brilliant people with incredible minds so the discussions are always bright and intriguing.

One of Hassell?s best friends at Elon is Kirstin Ringelberg, a professor of art history and coordinator of the LGBTQ office. They?ve known each other for nine years.

The deep and profound conversations started when Ringelberg first visited Elon. She was impressed by the knowledgeable conversation they had during the interviews and all the ones they have had since.

?We?d be interested in something, talk about something and then it would turn into a conversation about the meaning of life,? Ringelberg said.

Hassell said Ringelberg gave him the confidence to accomplish everything he sets out to do. He faced many obstacles in his younger years because he felt his dreams were out of reach. Now, Hassell said it?s remarkable to feel that he can do anything.

Nonstop creation and discovery

Hassell said he is lucky to be doing something he thoroughly enjoys. He did not expect to be where he is today based on the circumstances earlier in his life.

?I got here, I worked hard,? he said. ?But there were also people here to help me out. We all get help or can seek help. That?s a very important thing. That?s not a weakness. That is a strength.?

The jobs Hassell tolerated before have now determined what is important to him and why. He came to care about people in low-income situations or those deemed worthless based on their position in life.

Last summer, Hassell presented his written work on identity at conferences in Harvard University and in Liverpool. This experience allowed him to explore a separate side of himself and he said he is excited to develop it more.

Through these intense studies, Hassell discovered more about identity and how it influences society. It is a fluid thing, forever reorganizing itself.

?We?re complex, we?re changing all the time,? Hassell said. ?You have this range of things and you can actually be in multiple locations in terms of those identities.?

Hassell will retire in a year and a half, but he does not plan on slowing down. He aspires to move to London with his wife for a year. He wants to write a book. But most of all, Hassell wants to continue examining identity, the extraordinary people in the world and the ideas that spring from their heads.

?Ideas are just fascinating,? Hassell said. ?I get so excited about them.

Art, art history, featured, Homelessness, Ken Hassell

About Stephanie Butzer

Stephanie Butzer is a a Senior Reporter for the Arts and Entertainment section of The Pendulum. The Georgia native loves distance running, photography, playing guitar, writing and laughing. Her dream job would be to work for National Geographic as a photojournalist or work for another nature-oriented magazine. View all posts by Stephanie Butzer ?

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Source: http://elonpendulum.com/2012/10/elon-university-art-department-professor-reflects-on-homelessness-identity/

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