Debra Drexler
| THEN | NOW |
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| Current Residence: | Kailua, Hawai'i |
| Profession: | Artist and Art Professor |
| Marital Status: | Divorced |
| Number of Children: | Leland ('89) |
| My Best Clayton Memory: | Working with Mr. Englesman on all the plays I was in and wrote. I was big into existentialism then. It must be a high school thing. |
| My Worst Clayton Memory: | Luckily, I think time has erased them. Maybe it was not getting into National Honor Society, that day everyone was surprised with the announcement. They got flowers or something? I did graduate with a 3.95, but no Honor society. |
| What will I never forget about CHS: | Learning to tap dance for "No No Nanette". I had two left feet. |
| My Best Friend at CHS: | Sorry, my best friend was at another school. She still is my best friend, remarkably. |
| Where did I go after CHS? | I left Clayton a semester early to join my best friend at college. I wanted the experience of a party school before I got 'serious' at Northwestern. The Pre-Calculus class was at 8 in the morning five days a week, which really cramped my style so I transfered into a later Calc class was named "Math Freshman of the Year" at SWMS. From there I went onto Northwestern and realized that the part of the creative process that I was really drawn to was ideation rather than acting. I went from a theater major to a film major and eventually transfered to art school in San Francisco. I came back to St. Louis to finish college to be around my friends. Then between college and graduate school I spent a year teaching art in Athens, Greece. I went to graduate school in Painting at Southern Illinois University and before I had even finished, found myself the director of Riverfaces, a non-profit organization that taught workshops year round that culminated in an annual parade combining theater, music, art, masks and giant puppets in St. Louis. I did this for several years along with teaching part time at Meremac, Maryville U. and SIUE. All the while, I was continuing to establish myself as an artist, and showed frequently in St. Louis and nationally. In the midst of this I had a child and realized I need to find a more stable job. In 1992, I did a national job search for a tenure-track job and ended up at the University of Hawai'i where I have been since then. In 1998, I did a sabbatical in Australia where I traveled around the country as a guest artist, getting to camp with the crocodiles at Kakadu. I have been continuing to make art and show it nationally and internationally. I am best known for an installation called "Gauguin's Zombie" which I describe as Post Colonial theory meets "Night of the Living Dead". It was first shown at the Honolulu Academy, then Maui Arts and Cultural Center then it traveled to White Box's Annex in NYC. I also had a show in Berlin this year. I have been traveling quite a bit this year for work (At least one 12-24 hour plane ride a month.) So I am still trying to make up my mind whether to get on one more plane to come to the reunion. |
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| Personal Website: | http://www2.hawaii.edu/~drexler/debra |