CLAS Acts August 2021
Monthly newsletter of the tenure line faculty
A Note from Dean Drake
I’ve made some time to read this summer, as I hope you have been able to do, and I’ve excerpted an Emily Dickinson poem that caught me:
I years had been from home,
And now, before the door,
I dared not open, lest a face
I never saw before
Stare vacant into mine
And ask my business there.
My business, — just a life I left,
Was such still dwelling there?
There’s something here that captures the anxiety of re-entry, and the uncanny feeling that accompanies a return to a place we left quite suddenly. We are all feeling a range of emotions as we anticipate coming together again, and I hope we will offer each other and our students some degree of patience and grace.
And I must also say—I am really excited to meet more of you in person!
Reports of your doings are reaching our office. Robert Talbert was selected as a Presidential Fellow. Sandra Portko (Emerita), Gwenden Dueker, and Jing Chen of Psychology have been creating kits to help with early childhood development. Al Steinman was appointed to the National Academy of Sciences committee to oversee Everglades restoration. Bill Ryan let us know that the New Music Ensemble returned from their concert tour of National Parks “with all ensemble members accounted for”. May we all find our way back so successfully.
Some things are changing in exciting ways. For instance, over the summer President Mantella asked CLAS to take ownership of the Fall Arts Celebration. We have been invited to rethink the series and have made two initial changes: the series will run through the academic year, and at least for this year will be called the GVSU Arts Celebration. I am happy to report that Amorak Huey (Writing) is convening the Steering Committee comprised of Monica Johnstone and Mona Silva from the Dean’s Office; Danny Phipps and Bridgett Vanderhoof of Music, Theatre, and Dance; Paul Wittenbraker of Visual and Media Arts; and Nathan Kemler of University Galleries. We are also involving two student interns: Morgan Mitchell majoring in Ad/PR, and Chyna Bach majoring in Graphic Design.
We invite you to enjoy three GVSU Arts Celebration events this fall. Begin with the August 27 opening of the gallery exhibition Honest and Unrefined: Art Outside the Academy (more on that in the feature article). Next, on October 4, come hear the Tesla Quartet play Beethoven on his COVID-delayed 250th birthday. Then, on December 6, head to the beautiful Fountain Street Church to hear music for the holidays drawn from countries particularly hard hit by the pandemic. In the winter semester we’ll be offering Poetry Night and an academic lecture, and we will share details when those are confirmed.
I ask that you help us involve our students and the wider community in the celebration. These free events are excellent opportunities to connect with people that may not have engaged with GVSU or CLAS before. Let’s make the most of this fresh start.
Please join me in holding a great deal of hope for our new plans as a college, for the teaching techniques you forged in fire over the last 18 months and have decided to keep, and for our collective return to campus life. I look forward to seeing you at the start up meeting on August 26, if not before.
Until then,
Jen
Engaging with Expression--Challenging Ourselves by Bringing the Outside In
"Years ago my great aunt predicted I was going to be a minister, and in a way she was right, I think every artist is a minister and a messenger in a way." -Mr. Imagination
At the end of August as we re-engage campus life and appreciate anew what once we took for granted, a compelling exhibit will open its doors in the Art Gallery in the Haas Center for Performing Arts. Honest and Unrefined: Art Outside the Academy will be in our midst at a time when we are all thinking about what is and has been centered or marginalized.
The first event of the rebranded GVSU Arts Celebration, this exhibit offers our community voices that build on the 2015 Raw Art exhibit on a bigger scale. While that earlier exhibit was largely local, this one includes the Midwest and beyond. Many collectors were tapped as well as GVSU’s own collection. The curator, Reb Roberts is both an alumnus and created the first mural at the William James College in Lake Superior Hall. Himself a folk/outsider artist, Reb has become a leader in this area. He explains about this exhibit, first with reference to William James who famously wrote, “no impression without expression”:
Growing up in New Orleans I was constantly impressed. The streets were full of handmade signs proclaiming the reddest tomatoes, the only savior, the freshest shrimp, and on and on. There were parades and handmade costumes and music on the corners.
Everyday people making everyday excitement. Expressing themselves through the language of the streets and putting it on the streets.
As I began to travel to other parts of the country and the world I recognized those expressions throughout communities. There were disneylands made in front yards and houses made from kitchen sinks and beer cans. There were paintings on the sides of
rural highways that looked like some kind of cow, dog, alien love child. There were grottos dedicated to the sacred and the sacrilegious.
I realized that the tribe that created things in New Orleans had tribal members everywhere. They are the folk artists they are impressive. by Reb
Nathan Kemler, GVSU’s director of Galleries and Collections wanted to accommodate the voices of marginalized communities, primarily by getting out of their way. He knew that this is a fluid group of artists that defied classification, were not in the box and who confront us with questions such as “what is art?” and “who decides?”
These questions are prime candidates to launch conversations about privilege and power structures. Instead of asking how this art fits into a larger movement or historic context, here is, as Nathan puts it, a core of collective humanity with all the attendant dissonance and unaccustomed found materials.
“These artists see themselves as called to this,” Nathan explains, “like ministers to a community. For instance, Mr. Imagination [Gregory Warmack, 1948-2012] was a very big outsider artist, and he contended that ‘every artist is both a minister and a messenger’.”
Nathan sees these artists as having a real talent for immediacy with fewer filters. He hopes the audience will embrace this opportunity to look at hard questions without filters which means we might have to confront what offends or puts us in uncomfortable spaces. “We want to lean into this. They are telling different stories and asking different questions.”
A lot of different questions, as it turns out because this is a very full show without the familiar frames and white spaces.
Nathan notes, “This is about stories that have to get out, not about refining, refining, refining as we are taught at the academy. This is a challenge to all involved. Many of these artists did find success.” Nathan mentions Howard Finster (1916-2001) who found himself featured in Esquire and doing the art for a REM album cover, but who didn’t change his lifestyle and continued to embody non-attachment to the material. “Many of these artists had hard lives with experience of disability, asylums, homelessness. They continued despite the hardships and share their stories in humble ways. Success can turn some people to isolation and possessions, but not these artists who continue to connect to the world and one another with immediacy.”
Getting students across the threshold will be key so they, too, can connect. This exhibit has great potential for curricular and co-curricular engagement.
Some faculty, such as Melissa Morison of Classics, make a habit of using art on campus as part of their teaching practice. “The art on display on each of our campuses supports and enhances our teaching in so many exciting ways,” Melissa explains. “In most of my courses, I build in assignments that use the university collections. Current exhibitions in the University Gallery and other formal exhibit spaces are a great place to start.”
Melissa has also found ways to connect with campus artists. “Students in an archaeology class with a focus on food and social identity met in the Gallery with VMA colleague Tim Fisher to discuss ways in which he was exploring similar issues in his work. There were many interesting connections to be made between the work of archaeologists studying cuisine, and the kinds of ideas Professor Fisher was working with in his paintings. The students responded very enthusiastically to this discussion, realizing that interdisciplinary discussions like this can enrich everyone’s thinking in unexpected ways. After this session, they regularly made (and eagerly shared) connections between our weekly assignments and contemporary images they’d encountered on their own.”
It is not difficult to imagine the ways that Honest and Unrefined: Art Outside the Academy could be pedagogically fruitful for writing prompts and speech topics, discussions on subjects ranging from social justice to aesthetics to storytelling to material culture, examination of alternate histories, and much more.
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Honest and Unrefined: Art Outside the Academy
August 27 – November 5, 2021
Opening Reception: September 30, 2021; 5– 8 p.m.
GVSU Art Gallery, Haas Center for the Performing Arts
Unpacking the Exhibition Conversation Series
A lunch-time series of virtual conversations featuring professionals from a variety of backgrounds unpacking big ideas represented in the exhibition Honest & Unrefined: Art Outside the Academy on view at the Haas Center for Performing Arts this Fall. All events will be INT 100/201 approved.