Southeastern NEWS

                                                       Southeastern Louisiana University
                                           Public Information Office
                                           publicinfo@selu.edu
                                           SLU 10880, Hammond, LA 70402
                                           985/549-2341/fax 985-549-2061
    Date: 4/19/02
      Contact:                           Christina Chapple   5

Editors: Photo accompanies release
VETERAN ART PROFESSOR DISPLAYS FINAL SOUTHEASTERN EXHIBIT
     HAMMOND -- Barbara Tardo's more than four decades at Southeastern Louisiana
University can be traced back to a drum.
     The diminutive professor with twinkling eyes, a fixture in the Department of Visual Arts
since 1965, first came to the Hammond campus in 1956 as one of the scores of students recruited
over the years by legendary music department founder Ralph R. Pottle.
     "Dr. Pottle used to give little tuition scholarships to students in the band," said Tardo as
she reminisced recently about her career. The New Orleans native and Folsom resident will retire
on June 30 and is currently having her final faculty show at Southeastern's Sims Memorial
Library.  "Land/Water: Southeastern Landscapes" opened April 18. An artist's reception is
scheduled for 4-6 p.m., Wednesday, April 24.
     Tardo and two friends from Francis T. Nichols High School drove across Lake
Pontchartrain to look at Southeastern on the strength of Dr. Pottle's scholarship offer. "I fell in
love with the pine trees," Tardo said. Her decision to attend Southeastern gave her "a good
excuse to get out of the city, yet I was still close enough to be able to go home and wash clothes."
     The instrument that prompted Pottle to offer Tardo financial aid was the tympani -- the
kettle drums.
     "In grammar school, we learned to play music on what we called a 'tonette,'" Tardo said.
"It was like a recorder. Then, we graduated to an instrument. My cousin, Clifford, had asthma
and couldn't play a wind instrument, so he played the drum. That was the family instrument
available to me."
     "So," she said, "they gave a little person a little wooden drum."
     Her time as a Southeastern student was "four incredibly great years," Tardo said.
"Southeastern was a small college -- and how wonderful it was! You knew all your teachers, you
knew all the students." 
     Her decision to choose art as a major over music was "a toss up," she admitted. Tardo
minored in music, playing the kettle drums in the orchestra and the snare drum with the marching
band. She worked in the library "putting numbers on the backs of books" for long-time librarian
Marjorie Miller back when the books that she labored over were shelved in the building, Clark
Hall, that would one day house her art classrooms and faculty office. The tiny art department had
only two faculty, Paul Lawrence and Mel Falgoust, and when she graduated in 1960, there was
only one other fellow art major in the commencement processional.
     Tardo's art medium of choice was sculpture and, after teaching briefly on the west bank
of the Mississippi River in Algiers, she went on to study at the University of New Mexico, where
she received a master's degree, and a Louisiana State University, where she earned the terminal
"Master of Fine Arts" diploma.
     Then, at Lawrence's request, she returned to Southeastern in 1965. "When I came back,
we had two and a half faculty," she said.
     Over the years, Tardo said the Southeastern Visual Arts Department has continued to
offer the same strong curriculum in art basics such as painting, drawing and sculpture that she
studied, but, "We can offer so much more now -- ceramics, print-making. And, of course, now
we have the computers!"
     Tardo said her own abstract style of art has matured over the years. One of her landscapes
"Spring Shoulder," was chosen for the 1998 Fanfare poster and proved to be the most popular in
the annual fall arts festival's poster series.
     Her current exhibit, her fourth solo show at Southeastern, consists of all new works,
many inspired by the landscape along the Tchefuncte, Tickfaw, Tangipahoa and Bogue Falaya
rivers and painted either on site or from photographs.
     Her feelings about leaving her long teaching career "are mixed," Tardo said, "always 
mixed."
     "I have loved teaching," she said. "I love the students at Southeastern. They're different
somehow from students at other schools. I think they are more thankful for the opportunities.
And they work hard. Art majors," she added, loyally, "are particularly special, they're super. If
you aren't willing to get down and dirty, you can't be an art major. Our students are a family."
     Her ambition for retirement is "to finish my house," she said. Tardo built her home on the
Tchefuncte River between Covington and Folsom herself, but, she admits, it's only half
complete. "I've been living in my studio, which is 12-feet off the ground. It's been a little
crowded. Now, I'm going to finish the living space underneath."
     "Then, I'm going to build another shed, because you never have enough storage space,"
she said, "and make art until I pass out."
     "I'd also like to come back to Southeastern and take some English literature classes and
to read all the books I've been buying and sitting on my shelf," she added. "And I'll
entertain....I'll serve tea, if anyone wants to come by around at about 2:30 or 3....."
                             -SLU-
Press release and photo available online at www.selu.edu/news/spring02.html