In 1955 Colette Stuebe was a third year student at John Herron Art School, Indianapolis. Herron then had a five year fine art program. Colette was top of her class, which won her a trip to Europe to see work by artists not commonly shown in the US at that time: Blake, Palmer, Ernst, Klee, Wols, Mondrian, Kandinsky, Ingres, Grünewald, El Greco, the Lascaux caves, Duccio, and Dürer.

In 1955 Colette knew nothing about computers and nothing about Jeff Bangert.

In 1957 she started the MFA program at Boston University. 1958, spring, we met. 1959, spring, we got married in Evanston, IL and moved west of the Mississippi to North Dakota.