A celebration of life and retrospective is being planned for Pamela Jayne (Champion) Price, the Mr. & Mrs. Louis Rochester Professor of Fine Art, starting at 1:30 p.m. July 19.
Price retired from the endowed position in 2010. She died May 22 at age 77. She was married to attorney Joel Roderick Price, who died in 2015.
Price majored in printmaking, painting and drawing at Georgia State University where she earned her bachelor of arts and a master of fine arts in printmaking from the University of Georgia.
She spent most of her career at University of Texas Permian Basin, built the art program, hired several professors who are on the faculty today and netted many awards and honors through the years.
Friends say she had been having some health problems. Travis Woodward, executor of Price’s estate, had known Price for 35 years. She had two brothers, the youngest of which predeceased her.
“When I went to work at the university, she was working there and she had moved to Odessa. Her husband Rod Price had just finished law school and she moved here to set up practice in this area. She had an MFA, which is a terminal degree,” Woodward said.
She wanted to teach on the college level and UTPB had opened. She applied for work in a number of places. UTPB hired her initially on a part-time basis. According to UTPB, she retired in 2016.
“They were over at the Founders’ Building. That’s where the art building was at that time and she did that for several years,” she added.
Price applied for a full-time position when one came open. Woodward said it was a different time and a different culture. They didn’t hire her for the full-time post.
“… They hired someone else from outside and it was a man. She went into the academic VP, Ed Becht, and she asked him why. He said her husband would support her, but men needed to be able to support their families and that’s why he hired the man,” Woodward said.
“At that point, she told him her husband was an attorney …,” she added.
Ultimately, Price was hired full time.
“We forget, I think, how far we’ve come in the workplace. People aren’t where they need to be now, don’t get me wrong, but no person that would hire you would ever say he did not hire you because you could be supported by your husband and this man had a family to support,” Woodward said.
Price’s late husband was an assistant district attorney for Ector County. Woodward said Rod Price retired from there.
Woodward said Price was a very strong personality.
“She was very creative and one of the most giving people that I know. She would help her students in many, many ways. If they needed help, she would get them help. She wrote checks. She would financially help people when they needed it,” Woodward said.
“She had no children and her students were her children and she kept in contact with them. I’m still getting emails and texts from former students of hers. She was an amazingly creative generous, generous spirit,” Woodward added.
Price was the head of the UTPB art department and a full professor, which required a lot of effort.
“There still aren’t many women full professors at the university, so she achieved something and then received that endowed position which was very unusual …,” Woodward said.
Along with building the art department, Price worked with late UTPB President Charles Sorber to build the Charles A. Sorber Visual Arts Studios.
The celebration of Price’s life will start at 1:30 p.m. July 19 at the Nancy Fyfe Cardozier Gallery at the Charles A. Sorber Visual Arts Studios on campus. A retrospective of Price’s work will be featured.
Woodward said organizers are encouraging people to come with stories about Price and how they knew her.
UTPB Associate Professor of Art Chris Stanley said there was never a question that Price’s celebration would be held at UTPB.
“But to have the memorial in the gallery that literally Pam envisioned is just very, very important,” Stanley said.
Stanley is handling the selection of her artwork for the display.
“It’s only going to be up for about two or three days. There will be a showing of about 20 of her various mediums that she worked in primarily for the memorial,” Stanley said.
He recalled that Price called him for an interview on June 10, 1992.
“I was 26 years old at the time and by Father’s Day … I had interviewed and she was making me an offer for the job,” Stanley said. “She changed the whole trajectory of my life. Very rarely in a person’s existence can they pinpoint one moment and one person. I had never worked with such an education visionary. Pam literally designed a four-year art curriculum that for the most part is still in existence today at UTPB. She had a foresight, a long sight that most people that I’ve worked with don’t possess,” Stanley said.
“She was absolutely an amazing educator, an amazing artist, an amazing friend and an amazing mentor,” he added.
Stanley said Price was one of three people who had permission to call him early in the morning.
“At the time that Pam was at UTPB, she was on the forefront of a change in the way the university hired faculty so Pam was an administrator. You didn’t see a lot of women at that time in positions of power in the university, so in a way she opened those doors, and in a fascinating way she opened those doors for her students …,” Stanley said.
At the time, a lot of the students were women.
“… They got to see an empowered artist (and) visionary leader both in the studio and then in management,” Stanley said.
He added that he had women bosses before and Price was very fair.
“She was wonderful,” Stanley said.
On her passing, he said he wasn’t shocked, but he was sad beyond words.
“… It’s one of those things where death comes to all of us and you don’t get to pick the time necessarily in a way and so the way it was brought to us was a shock because I think it was very sudden and unexpected,” Stanley said.
He said the visual arts building is a testament to Price’s passion and her wherewithal. The art department was previously in a Quonset hut that leaked every time it rained.
“… When we were in the old condemned building which was on south campus there were issues that we would just obsess on until we could figure out a way to solve them and that issue became that visual arts building. Very rarely, I think, does an academic ever get the pleasure of being around that kind of energy and that energy resulted in this positive manifestation. That visual arts building has given so many kids careers, artistic lives; it’s fascinating. Now we’re starting to see the children of the kids that we taught in that building whenever it was built now coming to school at UTPB. We’re actually at a point now where we have second generation kids coming to that building which is absolutely amazing.
The building opened Jan. 13, 1999. Stanley said they built the whole art department in about 13 days.
“… The long and short of it is Pam came from a generation where they were persistent and they persevered through a lot of adversity. They did it not for their own gain, but their students and future students,” Stanley said.
When Price retired, a scholarship was established.
“The institution helped us raise $20,000 for a scholarship. We know that the estate is going to give us another $10,000, which will move that scholarship to $30,000. My goal is to raise that another $10,000 with memorial donations in Pam’s name to the Pam Price scholarship fund so that we can get that to $40,000. What that would do is help two students go to school,” Stanley said.
