University Daily Kansan
Monday, October 3.1977
2
Professor assembles aborigine art collection
Staff Writer
Bv ALLEN HOLDER
Edward Rube, professor of English,
probably finds it difficult to forget the time he spent with aborigines in Australia. He has an apartment full of reminders.
103 reminders, which Rube began collecting in 1965, are back paintings and other artworks.
Ruhe said, "I'd never heard of bark paintings before I went there in 1965. I took a fancy to one one day, so I picked it up and that started me off."
The paintings and sculptures cover the walls of Ruhe's apartment and fill his closets. Many art pieces also have been put in storage, he said.
Ruhe said he knew about how many pieces of the aborigine art he had. But added that he would not give his estimate because he did not want the whole world to know.
RUHE MADE his first visit to Australia as a visiting lecturer at the University of Adelaide in the capital of South Australia. After spending nine months there, he returned to the United States to survey collecting collections in museums and universities.
Bark painting, which are done by eight different tribes, are painted on slabs of bark peeled from trees, he said. The bark is flatted over a fire and buried under dry sand. The bark is in clay and yellow ochre, a substance considered sacred by the tribes.
Certain characteristics and colors
July increase in tax receipts aids Lawrence
More products were bought in Lawrence in July 1977 than in the same month a year ago, according to figures released Friday by Vera Mercer, city clerk.
She said receipts from July purchases generated $94,184 from Lawrence's half-cent sales tax, compared with $81,312 from July 1976, an increase of 15.8 per cent. June receipts showed a 1 per cent drop from last year.
Mercer said yesterday that she knew of no reason for the difference between the June and November dates.
Mercer all receipts in Lawrence businesses send their tax receipts to the state the month after the income. In that way, July receipts go to the state in August and the state then sends a check for those receipts to Lawrence in September.
In Kansas, local governments are allowed to have a half-cent tax in addition to the three-cent state tax on sales. Lawrence residents voted in 1971 to add the half-cent tax to help pay for improved services in the police and fire departments.
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identify each tribe's paintings, Ruhe said. One tribe will paint a figure with no background, while another will fill the body with work with designs. Colors also vary among tribes.
Rube said the paintings are always of a religious nature.
THE RELIGION is totemism, he said, and it "it rests on myths of the great animals of the dream time — the time before time began."
"Men have human bodies, but this is unimportant. Men have spirits that derive from the earth."
Ruhe said totemism had a peculiar notion of what men were.
"I was adopted into a tribe and I was told my towet was a red kangaroo. The fact that I'm human doesn't really matter. When I die the funeral problem will be to take care of that kangaroo's spirit, which is the important thing — to see that it is kek happy
He was adopted into the Yulignor tribe during his five-month visit in 1972 and immediately became a member of a family of about 180 people.
and taken back to the totem place where it belongs."
"The little girls would come up to me and call me uncle and the little boys would call me."
Staff Photo by JOHN SHARKEY
Bark for art
ekward Ruhe, professor of English, shows the shape of bark that the Australian Aborigine uses in their paintings. In the background stands a Aborigine doll used in their ceremonies.
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"Sometimes I know the secrets, but since he was taken into the tribe I can't tell," he said.
Although the secrets of the paintings might not mean anything to someone who is not an abortive, Ruhe said, "they're the most meaningful thing in the world to them. I was told I was very honored to be told those secrets."
WHEN RUHE was adopted into the tribe, he used a few cursive text messages some of the bark paintings hold.
The aborigines, who were described by Rube as a camping people who are somewhat nomadic, are an entire population of painters.
Although their abilities vary, Ruehe said, all adult males involved in ceremonial life are required to take their
His paintings, which he described as a museum collection, have been exhibited 20 times, including once last year at the Kansas Union.
Ruhe, who hopes to visit Australia again, said that although many people owned bark paintings, he knew of only two other persons whose paintings were ambitious collectors of bark paintings.
Despite his apartment (full of aboriginean art, Ruehe said, "I really don't believe in collecting. It's a wicked thing. But they (the paintings) are great to have around."
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