CSU professor explores redefining community, science through art

Below a large elm tree, in the abyss of 20-something-year-olds commuting through Colorado State University’s Oval to learn, teach or clock in, there is a man with a folding chair, easel and a paint box. While The Oval is a place for many, he sticks out like a diamond in the rough, drawing people and helping them to bring themselves back down from the commotion of higher education.

David Pyle has worked as a professor of arts and sciences in CSU’s arts management department for the past five years, and while teaching is a rewarding job in itself, Pyle is striving for a deeper purpose beyond the classroom.

“(Art) can be intimidating, and I think that’s really unfortunate,” Pyle said. “Culturally, we have created a pervasive sense around the fact that if you’re an artist, whatever that is, then you need to have a certain amount of talent, whatever that is. It’s really unfortunate, and it creates a sense that achieving in a particular way with the arts (comes with) a threshold that you have to cross.”

During the tail end of the COVID pandemic, the seemingly pervasive obligation to uphold the threshold began to deeply affect Pyle personally.

“All of a sudden, the act of painting became about, ‘Can I make a piece that’s ready to show?’ And it totally stopped being fun,” Pyle said. “I started thinking about, ‘How do I compare this work to a commercialized benchmark?”

Pyle stopped painting for about a year and a half, and when he chose to come back, it was guided under one question: “Do I really care?” This change in his work led him to sit under the trees on The Oval and simply paint what surrounds him, stepping away from that pervasive threshold that made him stop and bringing back the aspects that made him start to begin with.

Through this work, Pyle has attracted a community of both faculty and students, allowing them to stop, take a moment and have a “truly authentic exchange.”

“I have a responsibility to help tell the story that art making can help us connect, and I think it’s important for us to connect,” Pyle said. “Shit, we’re all in this together, … and every conversation I’ve been able to have, I feel that it is a gift.”

If the goal is to create community and authenticity surrounding art, why sit in The Oval — a space that all majors and students end up walking through at one point or another, rather than by the art buildings? Pyle said that is exactly the point.

“It’s a vast oversimplification, but I think people are hungry to connect,” Pyle said.

In Pyle’s professional work at CSU, he was given the opportunity four years ago to build his class curriculum for the green and gold initiative. With this, Pyle chose to combine his two passions: science and art. The class allowed students to use science to better understand the intersection between the two without getting caught up in the idea of a threshold of talent for either.

“I think the job of the arts is to create context and meaning, while the sciences help us to identify and recognize specific things, and then art helps us make sense of those things,” Pyle said. “I believe that you can’t have great art without great science, and you can’t have great science without art. They are two sides of the same coin, and unfortunately, it isn’t taught that way.”

Pyle has become a jack-of-all-trades, working several jobs that allow him to combine the two. In turn, he wants students to know that they, too, do not have to choose.

“I’ve been really lucky in that, I used to think I needed to figure out what I’m going to be when I grow up cause I can’t change what I’m doing every two years,” Pyle said. “Then after a while I realized that that’s what I’m meant to do; that’s who I am. I love being in an environment where everything is fresh, and sometimes changing my work every two years is the way to do that.”

Reach Ruby Secrest at [email protected] or on social media @RMCollegian.