This impromptu relationship eventually led her to leave the business in his capable hands. Goldston eventually convinced Grosman to use the offset press to produce more lucrative high-quality posters and books in addition to the company’s limited editions. Among those artists who took to the process were Johns, who used it to complete “Decoy” in 1971. Dine’s “Flaubert’s Favorites” and Rosenquist’s “Off the Continental Divide” also were printed on the press. Goldston, who counts Dine, Sam Francis, Buckminster Fuller, Enrique Chagoya and Jane Hammond among the artists he has worked closely with and called friends, believes in giving artistic opportunities to other OSU students. Each year for 23 years the company, which has a staff of 10, sponsors three art students for internships. The company pays for room and board, transportation and all other expenses, Goldston says. “It’s not just about the internship. It’s the exposure to art. While here, they can go to the Metropolitan, the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art, The Frick and the Whitney Museum,” he says. “It’s important that Oklahomans come to New York City or other artistic meccas and experience the art for themselves.” Despite his parents’ hardscrabble educational background — his father was illiterate and his mother only finished the eighth grade — art was an integral part of Goldston’s life. “My mother insisted we study something to do with the arts when we were in school,” says Goldston, who talks of having only one book in the house — written by Western novelist Zane Grey — most of his growing up years. “She didn’t know much about fine arts, so it is hard to say why she pushed us toward the arts. “When I was growing up, I remember that my mother bought a set of encyclopedias from a garage sale,” says Goldston, who laughingly remembers, “They were already old when she bought them.” Even outdated, they offered Goldston a glimpse into a world that he now is trying to expose other Oklahomans to, one OSU student at a time. He considers art a connection to the soul and mind of another. Goldston says Buckminster Fuller, “Bucky,” taught him that people live on in our memories, our thoughts and our hearts. As long as we remember them, they are still here. “My mother is in my blood, the very fiber of my being,” he says. “My father’s blood is my blood. He is in the fiber of my being. The soul of a person is in you.” Sylvia E. King-Cohen ’81 Photos Provided College of Arts and Sciences 4 Bill Goldston was the first printer to dedicate himself to intensive technical experimentation at Universal Limited Art Editions in Long Island, N.Y. In the late 1970s, Goldston assumed responsibility for the business purchasing different and larger presses, establishing additional studios, hiring more printers and inviting a new group of young artists to work at the studio. Today ULAE’s archives (above) include works by legendary artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg and architect R. Buckminster Fuller. alumni
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