John Gunther

I grew up in an English village in Ohio. Yep, it's true. It was a "greenbelt" planned community, built in the 1930s by a rich industrialist as an eastern suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio. A lot of the buildings were built in a Tutor English design. The village church was a stone barn shipped from England and rebuilt with a slate roof - charming.

I was a boy scout, sang in the church choir, vice-president of the senior class and off to college (you grow up fast in Ohio). I attended Illinois Institute of Technology with a scholarship in engineering. After two years of that I changed my major to architecture. I met Mies van der Rohe several times when he came to talk to the senior class (I'd sneak in). My art history instructor was the only American at the Bauhaus.

After a time I changed my major again (the first time I was disheartened by the lack of design skills of the engineers and the second time by the lack of structural skills of the designers) to psychology. Along the way I minored in anthropology (only because I took so many courses) and metropolitan studies (kind of a hybrid between social science and urban planning). I also dropped German and French (I think I tried German twice) and due to my poor language skills and shifting course list, could never manage to fulfill the department requirements for graduation. After 7 years of having a great time in college I dropped out.

Next I went to Roosevelt University and ran the chemistry labs there for several years and took classes in mathematics at night.

One winter my roommate and I hitch-hiked from Chicago to Northampton where his family was from (he now has a PhD in history and teaches in Vermont). I liked it a lot because it reminded me of my little village, but just a tad larger - a town version with the Civil War as it's theme. Eventually I moved out here and started to work at Hampshire College in the library doing media.

A few years later I had a photo show at Forbes Library and during the process of building the show my work got better. I was quite impressed by that. The formal structure of putting a show together had actually made the work better - cool. It was time to go back to school and I did. My Div II was in photography with Jerry Liebling (I think I took his concentrators class four times) and my Div III was in video (naturally).

Today, I'm married to the woman I love (a Smith graduate) and have had the best time with and we live in the Joshia White Cottage which was built in 1811 and moved to its current location in Florence in 1897. Sojourner Truth used to drink iced-tea on my front porch (but not where it is today - both the house and the porch). My daughter is also a Hampshire grad and is just about to finish graduate school in psychology (and then spend four months in India, so I'll be worried for half a year).

So that's more than you ever wanted to know about me. I'm interested in architecture, design, photography, filmmaking and narrative structure. I"m currently at episode 143 of the History of Rome (on iTunes by Mike Duncan) and am trying to get Final Cut Pro X to work (you know it crashes a lot, but I think I like it). This summer John Bruner and I are remodeling the media basement and building a new classroom.

I also have a blog (who doesn't):

This last year I've spent most of my time in the film building. We'll see where I end up this next year.

gunther July 26, 2011