[Missouri-l] Fw: [acb-l] Chronicle today: Tactile dome creator, "described movie action"

[Jeanne Fike]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chris Gray" <chris at bayareadigital.us>
To: <leadersleadership at acb.org>; <acb-l at acb.org>; "Joel Isaac" 
<scienter_i at hotmail.com>; "Joel Snyder" <jsnyder at audiodescribe.com>; "Jim 
Eccles" <jim.eccles at comcast.net>; "Jim Gatewood" 
<jimgatewood905 at comcast.net>
Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2009 3:27 PM
Subject: [acb-l] Chronicle today: Tactile dome creator,"described movie 
action"


>I thought you would be interested in this articale about the San Francisco 
>tactile dome and its creator.
>
> Chris
>
> Christopher Gray, writing from his BrailleNote
>
> Bay Area Digital
> 870 Market Street, Suite 653
> San Francisco, CA 94102
> phone (415) 217-6667
>
> Visit my blog at http://ChristopherGray.squarespace.com
> Come visit me on Facebook by linking to http://www.facebook.com/cpgray
> ---- Original Message ------
> From: Robin Burris <rcbur at yahoo.com
> Subject: Chronicle today: Tactile dome creator, "described movie action"
> Date sent: Wed, 4 Nov 2009 16:52:50 -0800 (PST)
>
>
>
> August Coppola, arts educator, dies at 75.
> Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer.
> Wednesday, November 4, 2009.
>
> He created the Exploratorium's Tactile Dome.  He brought visual arts to 
> the blind.  And as an arts educator, author and former trustee of the 
> California State University system, August Coppola is remembered as a 
> Renaissance man.
>
> The former dean of the College of Creative Arts at San Francisco State 
> University died of a heart attack Oct.  27 at his home near Los Angeles. 
> He was 75.
>
> "Augy was a brilliant man," said his friend Jerry Brown, who as governor 
> in 1981 appointed Professor Coppola to the CSU Board of Trustees.  "He was 
> a man of letters and ideas.  I learned from him."
>
> The father of actor Nicolas Cage, and the brother of director Francis Ford 
> Coppola and actress Talia Shire, Professor Coppola was often referred to 
> as someone's relative.  But his own charisma and immense intellect left 
> lasting marks on California and on San Francisco.
>
> While his famous kin brought the arts to large audiences, Professor 
> Coppola brought countless people to the arts.
>
> More than 20,000 people a year visit the lightless maze in a corner of San 
> Francisco's Exploratorium, where they "feel, bump, slide, and crawl 
> through and past hundreds of materials and shapes," according to the 1971 
> press announcement of the now-famous Tactile Dome.
>
> Fascinated by touch and its taboos - he told the Exploratorium that "the 
> first commandment in life is given: 'Don't touch' " - Professor Coppola's 
> exhibit made touch mandatory.  He later wrote "The Intimacy - a Novel," 
> about a man who interacts through touch.
>
> He was the opposite of a naysayer, said Larry Eilenberg, his colleague at 
> San Francisco State.  "He was the absolute yes-sayer."
>
> Everyone remembers the coffee.  When he became dean of the College of 
> Creative Arts in 1984, Professor Coppola brought a tablecloth and a 
> gleaming espresso machine into the utilitarian conference room.
>
> "The first thing he'd do was take everybody's coffee order," Eilenberg 
> recalled.  "I was not a coffee drinker, so the next meeting he had hot 
> chocolate.  There was a graciousness about him."
>
> He invented the Purple Globe Awards and bestowed them on celebrities to 
> entice them to come and tell students how their teachers inspired them, 
> said friend Graziella Danieli, recalling that Gina Lollobrigida flew in 
> for a day.
>
> "He was a Renaissance man," she said.  "He made you feel engaged and 
> excited."
>
> Professor Coppola co-founded CSU's Summer Arts Program in 1985, which 
> serves 400 students a year.
>
> And when a professor named Gregory Frazier invented a process in which 
> readers describe movie action so that blind people can better understand 
> it, Professor Coppola opened the AudioVision Workshop with Frazier and 
> championed the idea at the Cannes Film Festival.
>
> "August Coppola was a singularly creative leader who for almost a decade 
> inspired the students and faculty of our school of Creative Arts," 
> recalled San Francisco State President Robert Corrigan.  "He reminded us 
> all of why the arts matter."
>
> High School of the Arts
> He pushed the San Francisco Board of Education hard for a High School of 
> the Arts.  It was controversial because the existing arts program 
> attracted mainly white, middle-class students.
>
> The issue came to a head at a tense school board meeting on March 24, 
> 1992.  Black leaders were angry that their candidate had been passed over 
> for superintendent, and upset that the arts school was first on the 
> agenda.  They stood on chairs shouting "Recall!" as the board members rose 
> to leave.
>
> Just then, Professor Coppola jumped up and proposed a deal: Arts school 
> supporters would hold their testimony to 30 minutes, then relinquish the 
> floor.  Everyone agreed, and that night the board approved the school that 
> Professor Coppola and others had advocated for a decade.
>
> Today, nearly 1,000 students are enrolled - 70 percent of them students of 
> color.
>
> Professor Coppola earned his doctorate in comparative literature from 
> Occidental College in 1960.  A 150-seat theater at San Francisco State is 
> named for him.
>
>
>
> E-mail Nanette Asimov at nasimov at sfchronicle.com.
>
> This article appeared on page C - 7 of November 4 Chronicle.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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