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Coloring Outside the Lines
In the early 1960s when I was 8-years-old, a family came to our home for a visit. My father was a superintendent for a small
rural school district in northwestern Ohio. He recently hired a new band director, and this was the man, his beautiful wife
and young children. As I met a young girl, about my age, her mother placed coloring books and crayons on a table in front
of us, and said we could pass time coloring while the adults chatted. "Color inside the lines neatly," she urged. "Yikes,"
I thought, “I can't stay inside the lines even if I wanted to, and I don't want to." I encouraged my new friend to go beyond
the lines too, and she refused because her mother “would not like it.”
"Staying inside the lines doesn't mean better," I thought. We colored away that day. The little girl across from me rendered
a perfect picture with beautiful shading and vivid colors, while mine appeared dramatically altered with patchy shading all
over the page as I meandered in and out of the outlined forms with colors requiring an open imagination to embrace. When comparing
our finished products, we just smiled at each other as we silently and knowingly followed the adage “if you don't have anything
nice to say, don't say anything.”
Retrospectively, the experience and our behavior so long ago reflected the time we were living in, and foretold the future.
Back then, being African-American, as was this new young teacher and his family, meant staying inside certain perimeters and
respecting imposed guidelines. The freedom to explore beyond those limits was not encouraged by many people then. Yet, imaginative,
creative and adventuring souls could not be held by imposed boundaries. Each of us in our home that day had reasons for what
we did. Some lines needed (and still need) to be crossed to solve life's problems and to create new pictures, and sometimes
we need to draw our own lines. I quietly learned to embrace difference, and appreciate talent, courage and earned integrity.
As Harry Chapin sang, "Not all flowers are red." Her father was a fine band director, and his marching band formed excellent
lines. He eventually retired from Cincinnati Public Schools. My father, Dr. Neil Pohlmann, retired from BGSU a few years ago.
During his tenure he was chair of education administration and supervision. As daughters we mirrored our fathers' ideas, but
we didn't demonstrate half of their courage and integrity to color outside the lines, and blaze trails into new territories
of thinking.
Sandra Pohlmann-Carpenter ’75 | Art Education
Port Clinton, Ohio
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