Art Payne: Master Builder

By Barbara D. Kiernan, M.A.'90

When he saw his neighbor using a masonry drill to break apart and remove two boulders from the front lawn, Art Payne got an idea. He had recently finished building a 20 by 40-foot deck off the back of his home in Trumbull, Conn., and was trying to figure out how to deal with the awkward slope of the yard beneath one side of the deck. Looking at his neighbor's rocks, he envisioned the perfect solution: a stone retaining wall.

Had Payne ever built a stone wall before? No. But then again, he had never built a deck either, or sledgehammered a dining room wall to create a better flow between rooms, or installed bathroom tile and kitchen cabinets. "I guess I'm the kind of guy who will try just about anything," says Payne, director of the University's Department of Printing and Graphics Services. "Of all the projects I've done around the house," confesses the weekend handyman, "I'm most proud of this little stone wall."

For the past 21 years, Payne's weekdays have been filled with a different kind of building. When he joined Fairfield University in 1984, he brought experience in every aspect of the printing business. By age 20, he had mastered the precision work of applying color imprints to glass and other surfaces using a silkscreen process. He parlayed that experience into a printing apprenticeship at the Waterbury (Conn.) Republican American. Copy for each article, set in lead lettering called slug lines, was printed out upside down. His job was to read the story and insert the corrected slugs. "Looking back, I wonder if it was a sign that I was somewhat dyslexic, because I could read it that way just fine," he laughs.

Payne's apprenticeship took place during the paper's conversion from "hot type" to offset printing. This change required technicians to type the letters onto punch tapes then printed in galley format for proofing. So this man who will try anything bought a manual typewriter and a how-to book, and took the plunge. Try as he might, he was only up to 21 words-per-minute at the end of the one-year deadline (not the required 40) and lost his job.

He moved to the Naugatuck Daily News where, instead of working in the composing area, he began a job in the pressroom running the huge four-unit Goss offset web press. "I liked the urgency of it, the having to meet a deadline," he says, recalling the daily runaround to set up for the press run, ensuring that the monster rolls of newsprint were properly threaded and that there were no snags that could cause a break during the press run. "Forty years later," he confesses, "I'm not as excited about deadlines."

From there, he joined a local commercial printer and completed his studies at night for certification as a journeyman printer. Soon thereafter, he was promoted to printing sales, and after several years, joined Texas Gulf Corp. in Stamford, where he was hired to build an in-house printing operation. A corporate takeover five years later prompted Payne to apply to Fairfield University, where he began the long, slow process of building an in-house facility from scratch.

Longtime employee Debbie Feeley, a reproduction technician, remembers it well. "When Art took over, we had three small presses and one duplicating machine that could make 20 copies at a time," she says. Today, Payne oversees a staff of 12 who design and produce about 90 percent of the University's brochures, posters, invitations, catalogs, newsletters, and class materials. Three full-time graphic designers use top-of-the-line technology to create materials and calibrate them to the specifications of an in-house printing operation similar in scope to a small commercial firm.

"Over the years, Art has done whatever he can to improve the department," says Feeley, noting the more recent additions of a direct-to-plate printing system, a floor model paper folder, a high-volume electronic printer, and the capacity to process the University's bulk mailings. "Once Art gets an idea, he's patient with the process of planning for it, even if it takes years," she says.

Not so at home. "When Art comes up with an idea, he spends a couple of months reading and thinking about how to do it. Then he maps out a plan. Once he gets started, he's like a dog with a bone - you can't stop him," laughs his wife, Pauline Comfrey, MSN'96. "He's up 'til 1 and 2 a.m. every single night and on weekends, working to get the job done."

Yes, one can count on Art Payne to get the job done.