Longest time teacher will leave BCC after 43 years

By Elizabeth Ballinger.
After 43 years at BCC, Rober Purser, the college’s longest-time teacher, will be leaving the college next quarter.
The art instructor and former art department director will be “retiring” for the second time-his official retirement was in 2001, before he came back as a part-time instructor -to marry a long-time friend who lives in Victoria, Canada. He plans to join her there after their wedding to begin a project to restore her 1920s bungalow.
Purser, himself an artist, has had several of his modern-style craft works exhibited throughout the Northwest, and has commissioned over 30 works for public schools and institutions. He has designed tours and remains active in the Seattle Architectural Foundation, is the former vice president of the Northwest Design Craftsmen, and serves on the board of the Nordic Heritage Museum.
The son of two painters, Purser was born in Louisiana and grew up in the South in the 1940s. His father, who established the first art department at “Ole Miss”-the University of Mississippi-focused his paintings on the