Beginnings
Mens et Manus, the mind and the hand, MIT”s motto, has percolated through Dick Polich’s career as a scholar and craftsman using high technology to help artists make their art. His career starts in the suburbs of Chicago in the era following World War II. Polich is the son of immigrants from Yugoslavia. He grew up in a community that valued generosity and needed ingenuity and intelligence to survive and thrive in their new country.
The end of World War II marked the beginning of an epoch of great optimism and expectations. Everything seemed possible and growing up listening to his parents and their friends telling stories of their adventures getting to the new world spurred him forward on his own adventure. Surrounded by a love of games and sports he excelled in athletics and went to Yale where he was selected for the all east all star football team. After graduation he worked in industry for several years but never forgot those childhood memories of the tales of crossing the Atlantic. He had his own journey to make, but in a more modern way: he chose to fly jets in the Navy. Three and a half years in the Navy gave him time to think about what was next. He decided on the arts and in 1967 entered the Harvard Graduate School of Design to study architecture. Harvard didn’t work for Dick but making things did and he moved on to MIT where he studied metallurgy and did research on how to make metals stronger. Three years later he had a master’s degree in Metallurgy and five years after that he founded Polich Tallix art foundry.
His goal was to create a community of artists and craftspeople whose relationship was based on:
- Learning
- Experimentaion
- Invention
- A sense of adventure
- Fun