My Best High School Experience

Of all the teachers I had in high school there is only one whose name I remember. Mr. Bob Bitner. Mr. Bitner was my art teacher. He started his first teaching job at Monache High School in Porterville, California in the fall of 1970 which was the year I started as a freshman at Monache High School.

Mr. Bitner is the one in the orange colored shirt helping some students with a silkscreen project. Two of my first silkscreen prints are hanging on the wall between the posters of WC Fields and Laurel & Hardy in this scan of a not very sharp photo print.

I had always had artistic interests but it was the influence and guidance of Mr. Bitner that helped extend those interests to more than just a dabbling interest in art. He was truly interested in his students especially those who were there not because art was an easy class to take as was often the perception. He gave me encouragement that allowed me to experiment. He introduced me to silkscreen printing for the first time. He also introduced me to the work of Wayne Thiebaud. He even helped the students organize a short lived school art club called the USDA (United Sons and Daughters of Art). The room was decked out with everything art as you can see by the pictures. It was the room I felt most at home in and could have spent all day there.

Mr. Bitner took some of us more serious art students on the best field trip I ever went on. It was a field trip to be remembered the rest of my days and helped solidified my desire to pursue some kind of career in art. We boarded a yellow school bus before the sun came up on a Saturday morning and headed for Los Angeles a few hours away. We visited the TCL Chinese Theater, galleries up and down La Cienega Blvd, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the UCLA Art Department before arriving home that night after the sun was down. It was a full day of color, wonder, introductions to works by well know artists, and a ton of inspiration. It was to be the best field trip I ever participated in.

By the time my Junior year rolled around I was starting to play around with 8mm film. I and my friend Steve G had become interested in 8mm film making and made a couple of short films using some old beat up cameras we got from a pawn shop. One was a film about the birth of Christ we made as a seminary project with a sound track played from a reel to reel tape player and other was a light hearted super hero film called “The Might Kreegon” with sub titles. Before my Junior year came to a close Mr. Bitner invited me to participate in a film project he was going to be working on that summer. I was so excited and felt honored that he would choose me. However that project and not being able to complete my high school experience at Monache High School were not to be. It was disappointing to break the news to him some weeks later that I wouldn’t be able to participate in the film project that summer because our family would be moving to southern New Mexico so my father could pursue a new career as owner/operator of the first McDonald's restaurant in the city of Las Cruces.

I graduated from Las Cruces High School and had some good art experiences winning a couple of minor awards in an art show. The few times I was able to visit my friend Steve G in Porterville on our way home from trips to the Central Coast I took the opportunity to pay Mr. Bitner a visit which was always a highlight of those vacation trips. He passed away in 2015.

I owe my best high school experiences to Mr. Bob Bitner.