I’m Still Here.Faculty Art Show Sheds Light on Professors’ Personal Work.
By Kelsey Powers,Ben Schmidt, Brandon Schreur, Saraphina Sefcik, James Westenbroek
“We do this for them,” said Bert Polman, former chair of the music department at Calvin, following the reopening of the Covenant Fine Arts Center in 2010. Polman hoped students would be excited for the new spaces that they could experience, including the Center Art Gallery. Established over forty years ago, the gallery was, at one point in time, in the “Catacombs,” according to founder Edgar Boeve, but was moved to where students would be in “contact daily” with the gallery. The director of Calvin exhibitions, Joel Zwart, claimed that this was the gallery of the “Calvin community.”
Since it was established, the gallery has had over 300,000 visitors. It boasts these numbers due to their extensive collection and art shows of revered artists. Artists that include alumni and professors who have made their thoughtful work for others to witness.
The Calvin Art Department professors are not just teachers; they’re exhibiting artists. These artists believe that the arts are important in the cultural development of society. Professor Greidanus hopes that the community will “embrace” and “understand” the power of art forms.
Each artist focuses on a certain type of art including ceramic vessels, three dimensional abstracts, photographic work, watercolor drawings, rugs, and graphite drawings. These artists’ work will be explored in a series of mini profiles.
Vessels Find Movement in Griedanus’ Work
Anna Greidanus relates her ceramic vessels to “Burnt Norton,” a poem by T.S. Eliot that focuses on time and the capability to do good or evil. Similar to the Chinese jar still in the poem, Greidanus’ vessels involve movement even though they are motionless.
“The porcelain material is changed through my hands,” said Greidanus. Throwing the porcelain on wheel is the beginning of a powerful piece.
The process of making ceramics may take hold of the artist. Greidanus allows herself to get lost in her art, so it her emotions and experiences pour into the piece.
“It feels like my efforts are caught in the middle, between a traditional past and the promise of a desired future that remains just beyond my grasp,” said Greidanus.
Ceramics is more than just a type of art. It moves the artists and the viewers, according to Greidanus. Ceramic vessels “can alter our perceptions” and “move beholders to see themselves and the world differently,” said Greidanus.
Viewers may note how Greidanus’ stationary vessels display a sense of time even in their stillness.
Eric Heerspink Takes an “Atomic Drive”
Eric Heerspink, a graduate of Calvin College, creates three dimensional abstractions that are designed with asymmetrical forms and slip casting to create a ceramic form. “The grid exemplifies structure and stability,” said Heerspink in an artist statement “emphasizing the parameters in which the piece is governed and created.”
His work was modeled to reference a piece of futuristic sci-fi equipment, without any exact message or function for what they’re suppose to represent. “There is familiarity to the forms within the work while their arrangement is ambiguous and foreign, opening new possibilities,” said Heerspink.
“Science fictional machines (spaceships and robots) are designed for their aesthetic qualities while function is mythological in nature; often the laws of physics are abandoned,” said Heerspink. Heerspink’s design does indeed embody this idea to its core.
“Broken Models” with Hoag
Jennifer Steensma Hoag is a Professor of Art and Art History at Calvin. Her photographic work, “Broken Models,” captures the essence of our longing as humans to fit in with nature. The series depicts a figure, clad in a hazmat suit, studying, inspecting, and observing a series of landscapes.
But these landscapes are not what they at first seem.
These seemingly natural landscapes are themselves manufactured; taking the form of a set of dioramas “in various stages of being decommissioned,” said Hoag in her artist statement.
Each scene is populated by variety of fabricated foliage, soil, plastic rocks, and stuffed animals, standing tranquil within a magical and manufactured space. The tangible elements of the foreground deteriorate into the worn, sometimes peeling, paint of the back.
For the viewer, the series is aesthetically pleasing, complete, and in some cases, even dreamlike.
The images bring about a sense of recognition, that no matter how we might try to picture the wild as natural and untouched, that our actions as a species effect these creatures and their environments.
The deteriorating dioramas, highlight the fact that these depictions are flawed and imperfect; a false and overly optimistic interpretation of reality.
Taylor Greenfield’s “Ether and Geraniums” Reflects Crows and Beauty
Taylor Greenfield, a Calvin alum, focused her pieces on home. A mother with a newborn son, Greenfield has stated that she’s questioning the idea of home in her work as she struggles with anxiety and doubt, and what that means to people. She’s working through the
“necessary process of creating a home.” and examining the precariousness of the idea. For some, she posits, it’s a constant thing. Others have lost their homes, and some lie in between.
The birds in her art represent herself and her family, surrounded by physical aspects of past homes. However, she believes that home isn’t just a location. She wants her pieces to “convey the idea that home is so much more than a roof and four walls.”
A Forgotten Art Remade
Jo-Ann VanReeuwyk, Associate Professor of Art and Art History, used hand-woven rugs to express and deal with her emotions. As VanReeuwyk explained, “In order to counteract the negativity that I was experiencing over the past few years, I decided to count God glimmers by tying a knot each time I thought of one.” She began praying in this way, tying thousands of knots — or “God glimmers” — every time she thought of a way that God had blessed her.
In a time where the art of the Persian Rug and other such hand-woven traditions are disappearing as a result of the western carpet industry, such artful prayer is stands out. VanReeuwyk recently went to Indonesia, a place where the prayer rug is common, and found herself struck by a new, artistic way to express prayer there. While she knew of Christian groups that have started claiming the prayer rug for themselves, VanReeuwyk’s ponderings took a different path. In Indonesia, plastic garbage piled high on the street corners and vacant lots. John Hardy, her guide and the “mastermind” of the Green School there simply stated this: “America is responsible for introducing plastic to Indonesia; America needs to clean it up.”
Thus, in addition to her “God glimmers,” VanReeuwyk pondered another method of prayer. “Could we consider plastic as a medium?” she asked after her trip. “Could plastic become a staple of our collective prayer lives?” The answer is not yet clear.
Cowboys and Indians, and Speyers
Speyers contemplates two schools of Art, the Venetian and the Florentine. The difference is that the Venetian school focuses on the importance of drafting a drawing and then painting versus the Venetian school where the order doesn’t matter. Through his art he concludes that he is a supporter of the Florentine school as he believes that the sketch “Secures the scene” in his “mind’s eye.”
According to him, creating drawings initially allows him to perceive where the piece is going and then to paint quickly when he returns to his work some time later. Currently, his drawing of cowboys and natives are being shown which he plans to have turned into paintings in the next year. Nature is thematically largely present in his work as are historic and hard subjects such as in his piece “Chief Dave Bald Eagle” which depicts a man torn between two cultures as he is both a native warrior and a WWII veteran.
Other Exhibits
The art gallery is also currently featuring the “Mathias Alten: Through the Seasons” exhibit, a local artist from Grand Rapids whose 36 realist paintings and impressions are based upon landscapes and countrysides present Michigan’s seasonal change. This exhibit will be open until December 20, as will be the Art Faculty Exhibition. Following these features, the “Most Highly Favored: The Life of the Virgin Mary” exhibit will be available to view in Gallery 1, and “Ecce Homo: Behold the Man” exhibit in Gallery 2 from January 6 through February 25.
