Today I found out that my former illustration instructor, and more importantly, mentor and friend, Alan E. Cober, passed away on the 18th from a heart attack while on vacation in Florida. He was 62. His passing leaves me with such an incredible sense of loss, particularly since I have not seen him since his show at Buffalo State College in 1993.
He taught me more about being an artist — more importantly, about being an artist for hire — than anyone else. His professional and aesthetic advice sticks with me to this day.
6 February 1998
I have neglected finishing this page because I did not know what to write. Every day there's something that makes me think of him; some piece of advice, a memory from class, a funny anecdote. I guess I didn't know what to say before now.
He was hands down the best instructor I've ever had. He was, if you'll pardon the language, a ball-breaker. Class schedules ran like so: assignment given out on Thursday, sketches due on Friday, finished piece for the following Thursday. (The classes were only held on Thursday and Friday because he actually flew up on Thursday from downstate New York to teach the class, then back home on Friday.) That's the way it goes in the professional world of illustration, he told us, and sometimes not even that. On top of that he expected at least a drawing a day in our sketchbooks. I remember falling behind and the fear in my heart of being caught without the requisite number of drawings was like none I had never known before.
The assignments were usually 'live', meaning that the whole class' final pieces were submitted to a publication, and they chose one to print. I actually got picked once, printed in Governing magazine out of Washington, DC. What an honour. The illustration class of '92 was a bumper crop. I am so proud and glad to have been a part of it, shaped largely in part by Cober. (Even in death, calling him "Alan" just seems weird. We always called him Cober.)
Our class took field trips to Toronto to see Henrik Drescher, a visit to Philip Burke's studio, to the Buffalo Museum to draw, to the Anthropology Lab on Campus to draw (dead creatures, including a dead person). Everything centered around drawing. In the field of art, it should. His life drawing classes were amazing — he was never interested in having the figure look exactly the way it should in nature. An interesting drawing was a hundred times more important, and it was my opposite-hand drawings that turned out to be the most interesting.
After hearing of his cancer and subsequent amputation, I wrote to him in 1996 to tell him that he was in my thoughts and how much I valued what he had taught me. He wrote back to me and his spirit was so vibrant in that letter... it's a letter I shall always treasure. I am so very glad that I got the chance to tell him what I did before his passing. I am sorry, though, that the last time I visited the university I didn't get the chance to see him because he was in a meeting.
I feel so privileged to have known him, and more importantly, to have learned so much from him. I know as long as I have the knowledge he taught me, he will remain alive in some small way.
--s