The following is the text of the faculty address “Embracing the Unexpected: A Journey of Juxtaposition” delivered by Claudia Esslinger, professor of art, at Kenyon’s Founders’ Day ceremony on Oct. 26, 2023.
Watch a recording of the ceremony, or watch a video with audio of the speech.
Thank you, President Kornfeld and Provost Bowman for the opportunity to address this audience
of future founders and finders of our communal curiosities.
We welcome our new President Julie Kornfeld to the seat of honor,
in this, her first official peacock parade and ritual of remembrance
here at Kenyon College.
We welcome esteemed trustees and honored faculty,
steadfast staff, friends and families.
Fledgling first-years, after weeks of probation, unsettled, unsure,
today you will make your mark in the matriculation book
and secure your place in a line that stretches from our fine founders
to the future you will assure.
Today I invite you to consider a founder’s way to enhance your creative endeavors:
In every project you begin in this place,
look for the unexpected link to embrace.
This process of pondering prevails over time,
was practiced by ancient ancestors who were geographically aligned.
They relished their lives upon this hill long before Philander Chase arrived.
They roamed here and climbed and found ways to survive.
Imagine the old growth forests of Lenape and Shawnee,
who gathered what they needed for subsistence and beauty.
A daily forage led by skill and chance, resourceful knowledge, a living dance.
And the Indigenous Hopewell mounds that rise near this Middle Earth
are echoed today in contemporary art work.
Yet with no drones to measure, no dozers to pile,
they present a mystery of method and style.
Then on to our propitious progenitor Chase,
who foraged for meaning and moved place to place.
With his foot cut severely and leg broken farming,
He found college and ministry as newly beguiling.
He could have turned back, kept on farming yet then,
he saw misfortune as message, “Divine Providence” and
with intention he worked to create grade school and college
to provide local leaders with much needed knowledge.
He started in Worthington, then came to this hill,
where young men were trained through readings and drills.
He searched for support from the faithful in England,
who saw in Ohio a mission they believed in.
Hannah More was a patron who also saw sorrow,
then changed her direction to a path she could follow.
She was left at the altar three times, then
at the fourth offer she chose not to contend
with uncertainty, but follow her way individually.
Her “path forward” now followed her own epiphanies.
A writer of note, an abolitionist too,
she gave Chase funds for his mission to continue.
For these forebears we honor today, mishaps were signposts, diverting their course,
unintentional turns in their lives, not merely a loss.
Through tragedy they chose to change their trajectory,
and we may change likewise through sadness or opportunity.
Your lives may know sorrow or a gauntlet to cross
and the turns you take can be positive of course,
yet what if you foster a challenge to deepen
the content of each effort you begin?
You might invent an experiment, not out of fear
But by enticing enchantment, merging facts that appear.
Then the aspects of risk you embrace in your life
Would be hopeful conflations, not confusion or strife.
In the recent novel Babel by R.F. Kuang,
an example of synergy
reveals this alchemy.
Translators position words in two tongues
on opposite sides of silver bars flung
into service of empire.
Power production is procured
by intangible difference in meaning explored.
This is the very power that proceeds from our process.
When we posit two concepts and hope for success.
The inference may be elusive even to the creator
and the mystery is open for viewers to savor.
This mantra of making includes choices and chance,
a call and response between actions that enhance
each project beyond thought alone,
as action propels ideas yet unknown.
In this way your metaphors may freshen
and insights be greater than
your mind can concoct
in its nightly rumbling in the dark.
So how do we do it? This gathering and making
this finding and taking and molding and creating?
In each project consider a contrast to reason,
a thought or material or method out of season.
In every essay, poem and painting you prepare,
a purposeful synergy you can choose if you dare.
Find prompts flowing through the process of making,
play games to enhance their relevance, staking
your research, and dreams and materials together
as fodder for the road worth taking.
The method is a journey of juxtaposition,
juggling justice and judgment,
research and responsibility,
risk and resolve,
play and providence.
It is a journey of making,
of beginning, of trusting our actions
to lead our awakening.
May you try these approaches:
The searching,
the gathering,
the stitching,
the smattering of truth
woven yet unraveling.
May you center your attention
in the midst of annihilation,
a pinching of knowledge
in the pincers of deception,
then stir your concepts
in the cauldron of redemption.
Let us gather components and press them together,
as they offer a tune we can intone
whether or not we know the words or have the conviction,
the truth comes because of a juxtaposition.
May you see colleagues as collaborators, broaden your options,
lean into each other for inventive adoptions.
Together let us seek interaction and develop new meanings,
combine your journey with mine as our paths are weaving.
Through projects and place, materials and space,
the synergy of minds and methods will motivate us.
Sentience and Spirit will guide
beyond decisions of AI.
While facts elide our story,
the oceans crest and beaches scurry.
Your classes will vary,
understanding may tarry,
as you move from subject to substance
and gain more confidence.
This premiere place of liberal arts
provides possibilities for you to take to heart
the diverse knowledges of people and place,
of subjects and methods and gender and race
and nature that teaches us in its embrace.
This method will strengthen the projects you make,
but you must act, not merely mentally retrace.
Who are your founders? The ones you bring with you,
Those deep in your being, your thoughts and your dreaming?
Your foundations distinctive lead to synergies inventive
Your cultures diverse are gifts to reimburse the future.
It is my hope that through this process
you may be a founder for our next 200 years,
and, like Kokosing, be “obedient to some strange spell,”
leading our community in a continual experience of magical creativity.