‘I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.’

— John Cage

John Cage was a creative, innovative master of music. He was one of the original Black Mountain School of Arts in the Blue Ridge.  Black Mountain School was in the 1940-1950's was filled with artists who would later become famous on the national and international scene. 

Founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, and other former faculty members of Rollins College, Black Mountain was experimental by nature and committed to an interdisciplinary approach, attracting a faculty that included many of America's leading visual artists, composers, poets, and designers, like Buckminster Fuller, who invented the geodesic dome.

Operating in a relatively isolated rural location with little budget, Black Mountain College inculcated an informal and collaborative spirit and over its lifetime attracted a venerable roster of instructors. Some of the innovations, relationships, and unexpected connections formed at Black Mountain would prove to have a lasting influence on the postwar American art scene, high culture, and eventually pop culture.^{[citation needed]} Buckminster Fuller met student Kenneth Snelson at Black Mountain, and the result was the first geodesic dome(improvised out of slats in the school's back yard); Merce Cunningham formed his dance company; and John Cage staged his firsthappening^[3] (the term itself is traceable to Cage's student Allan Kaprow, who applied it later to such events).

Not a haphazardly conceived venture, Black Mountain College was a consciously directed liberal arts school that grew out of theprogressive education movement.  Source, Wikipedia, Black Mountain School of Arts

I went to a University that was at the beginning of its creation.  University of South Florida was  patterned after UCLA to be innovative and progressive.  Many professors and speakers are drawn to a new university and mine was no exception.  I had the wonderful privilege to have many innovative professors and hear exceptional national speakers.  Two I will always remember were Joseph Albers and Carl Sandburg.  Both were remarkable men that influenced me the rest of my life.  Joseph Albers was one of the founders and administrators of Black Mountain School of Arts.   Another of my favorite artist that taught at Black Mountain was Robert Rauschenberg.  

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG

Robert Rauchenberg

Robert Rauschenberg was one of the most formative artist in my career.  I remember being introduced to his work as a college student.  He approached art in a bold dynamic way using his own rules.  Until I saw his work I didn't know all the things art could be or do.  At the time my university was busy holding the line from one department to another, clay was clay, sculpture was sculpture, and mixed media had not yet found its place.  I found my home in Robert Rauchenburg, I was a mixed media conceptual artist who worked intuitively and there before me was the shinning light in the dark tunnel I had been traveling in.  His larger than life combines and use of found objects, objects used and touched and worn by time and use...artifacts of our time.  
He worked in NYC in the time of Jasper Johns and Cage.  There was a passion among these young NYC artists, they felt as if they were on the breaking edge of the art wold...and they were riding a crest wave of new art and a new way of looking at art.  

Elizabeth Gordon/Mixed Media/Influenced by Rauchenberg

He came to Florida, as James Rosenquist, looking for good light and warmth to work year round.  He built a studio in Captiva, Florida on the South West Gulf Coast.  His home and studio were built out over the water amid the mangroves and herons that frequent there.  His work became larger, and his photo and print works larger and more multicultural.  He was a man with a big heart, traveling to other countries, working with their artist and culture and integrating into his own work.  

I found other links of common bonds, he studied under Joseph Albers, who came to speak late in his life to my university, he worked with and supported causes that supported autism and artist with austism,  I worked with autistic youth in art, he worked and studied in Black Mountain near Asheville where I have a home, He worked with Donald Saff, an art professor from my university, and he loved Florida as I do.
I recently found out there is a museum and gallery in Captiva that houses his work, as well as, the Gugginheim in NYC.  I am very excited to go, and to enjoy his gallery and the area.  I hope you will explore his work, and plan a trip to see his gallery in Captiva, Florida-a beautiful part of this world. He was an artist with a unique vision whose innovation in the arts has forever changed the art world.