By DERRICK GALINDO
Senior Reporter
It’s the last semester of senior year, and David Poindexter is fast asleep. He is nearing the end of his undergrad program in psychology, something he had developed an interest in after he served in the Air Force.
However, what was in store that night would change everything.
This wasn’t an event for the history books; it was only a dream, a dream of Poindexter in a classroom, teaching students. While he said he was not quite sure what he was teaching at that moment exactly, he knew it was teaching.
Thanks to this dream, Poindexter said he realized that psychology wasn’t what he exclusively wanted to do as a career.
After finishing his psychology degree, he continued pursuing higher education—not in psychology, but in the arts.
Ever since he could hold a pencil, Poindexter said he had always had an interest in the arts. His brother Tom remembered a key story of his brother and his artistic skills. It was when Poindexter as a child went to his sister’s high school and the instructor asked what his father did as a profession.
It was something inexplicable to a then 3- to 4-year-old Poindexter, so he did what he knew best. On the classroom’s blackboard he drew out an RB-110 Face Shovel that his father operated in a limestone quarry.
Along with his knack for the visual arts, Poindexter has other pursuits that proclaim him as a well- trained artist —from years working with the early stages of digital art to the multiple photography books that sit on the bookshelf in his office on the second floor of the Jesse Dunn Annex.
Outside of the arts, he has other hobbies as well. Along with his history of capturing photos, he enjoys reading science fiction and fantasy books every now and then when free time strikes. He estimates that he’s read over 1,000 books of the science fiction or fantasy genre over his lifetime.
He also enjoys being outdoors, which is a chance when he can do another hobby, landscape photography.
Uncommon to most, Poindexter has a wide variety of music he enjoys listening to. — from old style rock and roll to jazz and blues, to classical and psychedelic trance. He said most people could attempt pinpointing his preferred genre with his age or the area he was raised in, but there could always be a curveball that the inquirer could be hit with.
Speaking of curveball, Poindexter used to have an interest in sports. However, he still has some passion for baseball, which he also played in high school. Outside of that, he considers video games to be the only other sport he plays. He sometimes plays adventure style computer games if he ever has an idle hour to play.
In the eyes of close friends and family, Poindexter is known for his introverted, yet incredible skill in the arts. His brother said he likes the way Poindexter sees the world differently, and showcases that difference in his art. Thomas Cornell, his colleague at NWOSU, shares similar sentiments.
“I think there is a good synergy between the two of us,” Cornell said. “He’s more proficient in photography and some of the two- dimensional media whereas I am more proficient in three-dimensional media and more experienced in painting … We have skill sets that are mutually complementary.”
At a previous college, the University of Texas Permian Basin, Poindexter’s previous colleague and friend, Dr. Marianne Woods, said she admires his flexible set of skills. This was important since that university had a small fine arts department. She also spoke of his humility, noting “he doesn’t like to blow his own horn.”
Woods pointed out Poindexter’s time in the Middle East when he was chair of the Department of Visual Communication in the American University in Dubai.
During that time, Poindexter got to instruct overseas. Along with this, he got to teach students of a higher status, including the sheikha of Abu Dhabi.
Once a week, he would be driven to the family’s compound to teach photography to her, a companion of the same age and a chaperone. While he is not sure of her exact status in the hierarchy, he said she was possibly the granddaughter of the president of the United Arab Emirates.
Despite his feats in life, and the admiration of his peers, he was initially unsure of going into the arts as a career, he said.
“Growing up in a small town, a rural area,” he said, “where having an interest [in art] is OK, but you’re not expected to go on and be an artist later on. A very large majority just didn’t see that as an opportunity for somebody from that background. I will say that made it an extra bit of a challenge going through school.”
Along with this, Poindexter faced many disappointments throughout his career. One big disappointment he had to deal with was the problem most artists have to deal with: never being able to stay in one place.
“In my time, if I’d have stayed in one place,” he said, “I’d probably be a full professor and maybe even doing some administrative things. That was one reason I went to Dubai, the opportunity to run a particular department.”
Another disappointment he had was from his time working in digital art. He enjoyed learning about digital art, and the passion was there, but it was other factors that led to not being able to work in it at the time.
“This was pretty early when people were getting MFAs that were focusing on digital art,” he said, “so there just weren’t many jobs out there that were for people focusing on digital art. I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to move into a digital art position.”
If there were a chance to change his life in order to avoid these disappointments, Poindexter said he wouldn’t do it. Still, if he could go back, he would seize more chances to be more confident in pursuing his dreams.
These challenges shaped him to what he is today, he said. Even if he made changes to seize it sooner, he said his life wouldn’t be the same. He wouldn’t have achieved the same things.
Poindexter said his greatest accomplishment, along with his current partner Sharon, was his opportunity to work in the arts as well as the fact that he stuck to it and kept his passion alive for the arts and to teach the arts.
To him, being able to get to the point to look back at his life and say “I’ve had a career in it” is all that he wants, he said. Granted, it isn’t over, but up to this point, he’s happy he has been able to work in the arts, he said.
During his time getting his graduate degree, he ended up teaching a photography class for non-students. Poindexter said he ended up feeling a sense of deja vu. It was that dream, the one that changed everything.
“I often had dreams that I remember that I find context in some creative aspect,” he said. “A majority are not prophetic, but certainly I think that one was. As long as I get to teach visual art and make visual art, I’m usually happy.”
Poindexter earned a bachelor of arts from University of Missouri-Columbia, a bachelor of fine arts from Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Florida State University.
Next semester, students will find him teaching foundations of two-dimensional art, printmaking and graphic design classes. The two-dimensional art class is open to all students.
