UI employees bring unique sense of style to their workspaces

In January, we put out a call to University of Iowa faculty and staff, asking for examples of cubicles with character, offices with ambience, or something beyond the typical framed family photo or motivational poster.

What we found: a shrine to the Hawkeyes (and former football player Bob Sanders in particular); frogs, moose (the plural is not "meese," as a certain fyi editor might be known to say), and Stupid Sock Creatures; and an entire wall full of pop-culture.

Take a peek at your fellow coworkers and their unique sense of style. And be sure to check out this issue's photo feature for a detailed look at these colorful collections.

Rick Altman, Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature

When a person performs several roles, it has been said that the person in question “wears a lot of hats.” Often this expression is used figuratively.

Rick Altman, professor of cinema and comparative literature, uses his numerous hats to introduce films in his courses. Photo by Tom Jorgensen.

In the case of Rick Altman, professor of cinema and comparative literature in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the phrase must be applied literally.

Altman teaches a large undergraduate course, Film Analysis, and realized that his introductions to each film might have more impact if he wore a hat that identified with one of the film’s characters or genre. A cowboy hat would transform Altman into John Wayne; a bowler would bring to mind Charlie Chaplin. Soon Altman was acting out skits in front of the class.

“Film Analysis students may forget my lectures, but apparently they don’t forget my film introductions,” Altman says. “Many of them have told me the image of those hats—along with the skit they recall—remains graven in their minds for years later.”

Over time, Altman’s hat collection grew, as did his repertoire—he went from single-character introductions to dialogues between characters or production personnel, which would require a separate hat for each character so the students could follow along.

You have a few dozen hats in your possession. When did you start collecting them?

Altman: I’ve worn hats for decades. Little by little, my single cap—a Breton fisherman’s cap—flourished into a small collection. After I started using the hats in my course and the introductions became more complex, I needed new hats. I had a fedora to play Belmondo, but no top hat for Fred Astaire. Wherever I lecture, I would check out the city’s best hat store—my favorites are in Seattle and Madison—and buy a new hat. Then students started regaling me with hats. I relocated the hats to my office, where I could pull one off the wall according to the inspiration of the moment.

How do people react to seeing all these hats?

They are perfect conversation starters. Everyone seems to have an image of a favorite film character wearing a hat—invariably one of the hats hanging on my walls.

Which hat is your favorite?

I especially love my Maurice Chevalier straw hat. With that hat and a cane, I easily overcome my inhibitions and happily do my best Chevalier imitation: “Sank hevans for leetle girls, for leetle girls grow beeger ev’ry day.”

You wear the hats to get into character—any other roles for the hats?

The final week of the semester, I bring in a large bag filled with all the hats I’ve worn in class. As I take each one out, I encourage the students to identify the genre that each one represents. At first it’s easy: when a Sherlock Holmes hat appears (along with its matching Oom Paul pipe), they call out “detective film.” But then I pull out the top hat and one group yells out “musical” while another screams “costume drama.” Pretty soon the whole class is engaged in an active discussion about overlaps among genres, about the complex signals that genre costumes can send—in short, they are discussing the very topics that the final week is designed to cover.

Bruce Ary, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics

	Bruce Ary, nursing assistant in University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, covers the cart room wall with pictures of horses colored by young surgery patients while waiting for procedures in the Day of Surgery Clinic. Photo by Tom Jorgensen.

Not many people get to see the “cart room,” a restricted, windowless area on the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics’ fifth floor where hospital beds are stored when they’re not in use.

But the room is a source of pride for Bruce Ary. The room’s back wall is nearly covered by pictures of horses colored by young surgery patients while waiting for procedures in the Day of Surgery Clinic.

For the past three years, Ary, a nursing assistant whose job is to prepare patients for surgery, has given frightened children the pictures to color before their procedures.

“It takes awhile to fill in the pictures, so it’s a great distraction for them,” he says. “It takes their mind off of their surgery.”

Horses are a big part of Ary’s life outside of work. He and his wife raise miniature horses on a farm near Anamosa.

How did you get started collecting these pictures?

Ary: I started about three years ago in the Day of Surgery Clinic where I worked off and on. This young girl came in for surgery and I asked her to make a picture for me, and I hung it up on our toy room wall. The next day I went to see the picture and it was gone. I asked around and found out it was thrown away. I was told that we can’t keep them all. I started to hang them in here. Over 200 pictures later, they’re still here.

Do you have a favorite picture?

One of my favorites is one a young girl started to color, but didn’t finish before surgery. I showed her pictures that I keep in my pocket of the horses my wife and I raise. The girl told her dad that she wanted one, so I gave them our phone number and off to surgery she went. One day a couple months later the phone rang and this guy said that he’d talked to me at the hospital and wanted to come see our mustang horse. So up the drive came this van, and when the side door opened, this little girl said, ‘I have a surprise for you!’ Then she handed me the picture I gave her, finished after her major surgery.

This is a restricted area, so not many people see the pictures. What do your colleagues think about them?

People are amazed when they see the pictures on the wall and realize each one represents a scared child. I wish more people could see them.

Are all the pictures from coloring books?

Some of these are copied out of a horse coloring book and some copies I made myself. One special picture is me holding a newborn colt in the barn. My wife took a picture and made it into a coloring book picture on the computer. It’s awesome to look at each one and see how differently each child colors the horses.

What role do the pictures play in your daily work?

I’m very touched by this role these little horses play in the pre-surgery area here at the UIHC. Seeing all of these pictures reminds me that I’m doing something worthwhile.

Gonzalo Campos, Department of Spanish and Portuguese

	Gonzalo Campos, teaching assistant in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, once had more than 300 coffee cups from the Java House in his office collection. Photo by Tom Jorgensen.

It’s not difficult to find Gonzalo Campos’s cubicle in the office he shares with about 50 other teaching assistants on the second floor of Philips Hall.

Just look up and walk toward the tower of Java House cups.

“I always tell people, ‘I’m at the coffee cups,’” says Campos, a teaching assistant in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

The paper cups—today there are about 50 that are stacked, propped, and glued together—form a structural element on top of his cubicle walls.

It all started four years ago when Campos noticed Java House cups collecting on his cubicle-neighbor’s desk. The two teaching assistants began to stack them across the tops of their cubicles, turning old paper cups into art forms.

Campos points out the evolution of Java House cup designs, as seen through his collection. There’s even what he calls an “albino cup” from one week when the Java House ran out of the printed cups.

You must drink a lot of coffee.

Campos: There used to be a lot more, probably about 300. They pretty much took a considerable portion of the whole office. At some point, however, some people had concerns that they were inconvenient for the janitors. (For example, they would fall easily when they tried to change a light bulb). That’s when I decided to arrange them in a different and more stable way. So, I started to play with them by making cuts and gluing them together in different ways, and then I attached them to a cardboard platform. About 200 of them are in storage. I had to throw some away, unfortunately.

What’s your favorite part of the collection?

I like the thing as a whole, but I love the two columns where one looks like it’s putting its head on the other one’s shoulder. It makes me think of my wife and me, I guess.

What role does it play in your office?

Building it was definitely recreational, and it was the most fun. It has also made interesting conversations about, for example, the role of caffeine in grad school. The other thing is that, since cubicles—and pretty much the whole Phillips Hall building—are designed in a very square fashion, the installation kind of breaks the straight lines and makes it look more organic.

What do you do with the cups now that you can’t collect them?

I can’t get coffee “to go” anymore. I stay at the Java House and drink it there.

Dale Fisher, UI Museum of Art

	Dale Fisher, director of education at the UI Museum of Art, began displaying junk mail items on his office wall. Six years later, his collage includes mementos, keepsakes, and anything that reflects his sense of humor. Photo by Tom Jorgensen.

By itself, a postcard, news clipping, or bumper sticker isn’t all that imposing. Collect hundreds of these items, and…well, you can cover one really big wall.

Dale Fisher, director of education at the University of Iowa Museum of Art, has done just that, creating a wall-sized collage of visually interesting mementos, keepsakes, and junk mail that dominates his office.

“The director of the museum tells me that when I leave this office I’m not getting my security deposit back,” Fisher says with a grin.

The collection has its beginnings nearly six years ago, when Fisher was receiving lots of junk mail. He would display the most interesting items on the south wall of his office, and soon found himself having to layer things as the composition took over the wall.

Now people contribute to the cause, bringing in knick-knacks and trinkets that would feel right at home in Fisher’s lair.

Um…wow. This is impressive. Is this a typical response to your collection?

Fisher: When people come to my office for appointments, they never pay attention to what I am saying because they are too busy looking at my wall.

Is it possible to have a favorite piece of the collage, given the sheer number of pieces?

I have many favorite pieces, for many different reasons. I have Mardi Gras beads and a voodoo chicken foot from New Orleans. I have a miniature sock monkey. There’s a postcard from the Chelsea Hotel in New York City. I have all kinds of things that people have given me to add to the wall. What is really strange is that even with the volume and variety involved, I can recall where most pieces came from or who gave them to me.

What sort of role does your collage play in your work environment?

The fact that people give me things to add to the wall makes it a fun kind of collaboration. There are recreational and therapeutic aspects to this—I have a lot of fun adding to the overall composition with little things I find here and there. I also have a dark and inappropriate sense of humor that would be completely wrong to express in the workplace that finds its way into my wall collage.

Is there anything else you’d like people to know about your collection?

To be honest, the wall collage has been a completely organic and spontaneous project—to analyze it too much would be a mistake.

Leslie Gannon and Michele Francis, College of Nursing

Leslie Gannon (left) and Michele Francis, communications and marketing staff members in the College of Nursing, spend the occasional lunch hour working on their Stupid Sock Creatures. Photo by Tom Jorgensen.

Perhaps you consider your officemate strange. But do you share workspace with a hot pink creature with four arms, a forked tail, and a tuft of black hair?

(If your answer is “yes,” we’d love to talk to you. —ed.)

The aforementioned being, whose name is Beezle, is one of the numerous “Stupid Sock Creatures” that inhabit the office shared by Michele Francis and Leslie Gannon, communications and marketing staff members in the College of Nursing. Francis and Gannon began making these footwear friends about a year ago, inspired by a Stupid Sock Creatures book that belonged to one of Gannon’s former coworkers.

“We looked up information on the book, and when we saw all the crazy creatures in the online gallery, we had to give it a try,” Gannon says.

Since buying the book, Gannon and Francis’ community of creatures boasts a population approaching two dozen, and population control isn’t a high priority.

What’s your favorite piece?

Leslie Gannon: Of the ones I’ve made, I think my favorite is Marley—a little Rastafarian-looking dude, complete with dreadlocks and a peace symbol tattoo. Of Michele’s, I think Fleebus is a masterpiece, with his toe-sock wings and worried look.

Michele Francis: Of mine, my favorite is usually the most recent one I’ve finished (Beezle is the latest addition). Of Leslie’s, my favorite is Gregor Slutsky because his hat looks like a pair of multicolored underwear, with his horns sticking out through leg holes.

How do the creatures take shape?

LG: The book gives us five or six basic patterns, but each creature seems to morph during the process. The shape or pattern of the sock will cry out for special features or creative touches.

What role do these creatures play in your work environment?

MF: We sometimes stitch them during our lunch hour, so I guess you could say they are recreational. They are a great conversation starter—or distraction.

LG: For me, they lend a little bit of our personalities to the office, which in a way is cathartic.

What kinds of reactions do you get to your collection?

MF: Some people are incredulous or puzzled—sort of a “why do you do this?” reaction. And some have said, “The socks you cut up are better than the ones I wear!”

LG: Horror! Outrage! Disgust! No, I’m kidding—people love them! They ask us if we’ll sell them.

MF: That’s a common reaction, that we should sell them.

Would you sell them?

LG: No! For one, the creator of the book has a copyright on the pattern, but even if we could sell them, I don’t know if I could part with any of them.

Patsy Porter, Department of Public Safety

Patsy Porter, records clerk in the UI Department of Public Safety, has been collecting frogs since she was 10 years old, when she was part of a swim team that came to be called the Green Toads. Photo by Tom Jorgensen.

Patsy Porter, a records clerk in the Department of Public Safety, has frogs in every room of her house. She has a frog clock, a frog vacuum cover, and frog planters. Her license plate reads PADHOPR. And she wears a 14-karat gold frog necklace almost all of the time.

So it should come as no surprise that frogs are part of her office décor. A frog humidifier. A frog screen-saver. A frog calendar. You get the picture.

“I have a lot of friends tell me they think of me when they see a frog somewhere (in a store or even live ones),” Porter says. “When I'm wearing my necklace, I get a lot of comments on it from people I encounter. It's a great conversation starter.”

How did your collection start?

Porter: When I was 10 years old I became a member of the Washington, Iowa, YMCA/YWCA swim team. Eventually we came to call ourselves the Green Toads. We all bought little frog patches and sewed them to our swimsuits, and we had T-shirts printed with Green Toads on the front and our name on the back. Shortly thereafter I saw some stuffed animal frogs at the drug store. The biggest one was called Flippo, the medium-sized one was called Flippo Jr., and the small one was called L'il Flip. I used my money I had made working as a basket girl at the swimming pool to buy them. I still have Flippo and L'il Flip. I gave Flippo Jr. to a friend of mine who was also on the swim team. It just continued on from there.

How many frog items have you collected?

Hundreds. I've never taken the time to count them all.  

Do you have a favorite?

I suppose Flippo and L'il Flip are two of my favorites since they were my first. I have a stuffed Warner Bros. frog that's about half as big as I am. (It was left on my doorstep, and to this day I don't know where it came from.) I also have a stained-glass frog garden stone and a Kermit the Frog phone. And of course, all of the ones given to me by my friends and relatives are special.

How do your frogs contribute to your work environment?

They're just fun. It helps brighten my day to have all these smiling creatures looking back at me every day.

Colleen Schreier, Joint Office for Patient Financial Services

	Colleen Schreier, patient account representative in the Joint Office for Patient Financial Services, has no shortage of items dedicated to her beloved Iowa Hawkeyes—in particular, former UI football standout (and reigning NFL Defensive Player of the Year) Bob Sanders. Photo by Tom Jorgensen.

When it comes to fans of the Iowa Hawkeyes, there are varying degrees: the garden-variety types who might make small talk about the teams; the folks who browse the standings in the sports section’s fine print; and the ones who paint their faces black and gold, don their Hawkeye-colored overalls, and scream themselves hoarse from the stands.

And then there’s Colleen Schreier.

Schreier, a patient account representative with the Joint Office for Patient Financial Services, drives a “Hawkmobile”—a special-order yellow SUV decked out in Hawkeye regalia—and displays “86ALLUP” on her license plates, a reference to the last-second touchdown play from the Hawkeyes’ victory in the Capital One Bowl in 2005. She also had the honor of sitting next to her favorite Hawkeye, reigning NFL Defensive Player of the Year Bob Sanders of the Indianapolis Colts, at a 2004 spring banquet.

Her workspace cannot hold the thousands of Hawkeye items she has collected, but it holds plenty. Her cubicle is adorned with photos, posters, news clippings, plush figures, coffee mugs…everywhere you look, a Tiger Hawk is staring back at you.

When did you start collecting Hawkeye gear?

Schreier: This all started when I left Iowa and ended up in Virginia, but remained a huge Hawkeye fan. It’s grown into my “home and away” collection—my favorite piece is actually not at work. It’s my Bob Sanders shadow box with an autographed shirt. It also has a shirt and shorts signed by some of the greatest players: Matt Roth, Sean Considine, Abdul Hodge, and so on.

How did you get to hang out with Bob Sanders?

I got to sit right next to him at the 2004 spring banquet in West Des Moines, all because of a bowl shirt I was wearing. I bought the shirt in Florida at the “good” Outback Bowl, in 2004 when we beat Florida—it says “The Bob Sanders Hit Club.” A woman from Prairie Meadows, which was sponsoring Bobby’s table, noticed my shirt and approached me before the banquet started. Later on, just before the meal began, she came and got me and escorted me up to his table! Coach Ferentz was grinning from ear to ear. Life has never been the same—I sent Prairie Meadows a Christmas card and thank-you note!

Is it true that you were the football team’s good-luck charm for a while?

Well, the Hawks did win 41 straight games when I was in the stands!

What kind of reaction does your collection get at work?

All kinds, but mostly smiles from passers-by, people who know me from tailgating at Iowa games, and other fans who admire my passion for Iowa sports.

Does your collection help you get through the day?

It’s my zone of comfort and sharing, and it’s a lot of fun to look at for a dose of happiness. Every picture has a good memory attached to it.

Heather Stalling, University Housing

	Heather Stalling, manager of academic initiatives in University Housing, saw her moose collection take off when she moved to Alaska for her first job. Photo by Tom Jorgensen.

Heather Stalling is used to the questions when people enter her Stanley Hall office for the first time. You wouldn’t be the first to ask, for example, how someone in Iowa amassed such a large collection of moose items.

“I also get asked a lot about whether I have many moose or many meese,” she says. “Actually, the plural of moose is moose. Similar to sheep.”

Stalling, manager of academic initiatives in University Housing, started collecting moose items eight years ago when she was a college student. But the collection really took off when she moved to Alaska for her first job.

Today, she has more than 150 moose, from stuffed animals to moose-crossing signs. They cover her office bookshelves, filing cabinets, and windowsills. Many more live in her “Alaska room” at home. Stalling even has a blue moose tattooed on her ankle.

So, why moose?

Stalling: It was something unique to collect. For as large as moose can be, they are extremely graceful, quick, and majestic, and they demand respect. My collection grew significantly when I lived in Alaska. While I was there, I changed my focus to collecting blue moose—blue being my favorite color.

How do people react when they enter your office?

Now that I live in Iowa, shock is the most common reaction. Then I hear the comment, ‘That’s very unique,’ or ‘You must be from Minnesota or the Dakotas.’ Once the person realizes I lived in Alaska, the comments change to, ‘That’s really cool.’ Little do they know I started the collection in Missouri.

What’s your favorite moose?
 
It is a tie between a stuffed blue moose that was made for me—when you push a button in its tummy, you hear children laughing—and a stuffed moose with telescoping legs with holiday lights in its antlers.

What impact do moose have on your work environment?

The moose in my collection are reminders of people I’ve met and places I’ve visited. Moose also remind me to be strong in the face of adversity, be graceful under pressure, and smile. Yes, moose really do smile.

by Madelaine Jerousek-Smith and Christopher Clair