William Le Baron Jenney: First Congregational Church, Manistee, Michigan

William Le Baron Jenney, Principal Architect
First Congregational Church, 1892 
Manistee, Michigan 

A Michigan Historic Site, copy taken for the commemorative plaque presented outside the building. William Le Baron Jenney, eminent Chicago architect known as the “father of the skyscraper,” designed this beautiful Romanesque church. Completed in 1892, it features vibrant stained glass windows, two of which are of Tiffany design. The soaring rafters form a canopy over the curved hand-carved pews in the luminescent and graceful interior. Lumber, salt, and shipping industrialists of the late nineteenth century attended and supported this distinctive house of worship.

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David Versluis’s: These Photos Now: “about to break apart”

©David M. Versluis
These Photos Now: About to Break Apart 
Montage, Archival Pigment Print 2015
18"W x 27"H

The University of South Dakota Art Galleries is currently showing, New Union / Re Union, in Gallery 110, located in the Warren M. Lee Center for Fine Arts. This exhibition features 50 artists, “who know Vermillion and/or the area intimately well,” interpreting lines from the poetry of Cynthia Nibbelink Worley, Harlem, NYC. The exhibition runs to February 15, 2016.

Versluis’s Artist Statement
Invited artists were asked to develop an image based on a single line in the poem by Nibbelink Worley a Dordt College alumna, class of 1966. I was assigned the line “About to Break Apart” from the poem titled, “These Photos Now.” The house façade, in the montage, is a photograph I took of the ca. 1900 farm homestead in Heritage Village in Sioux Center, Iowa.

These Photos Now ©Cynthia Hibbelink Worley

Looking at the photos now
They tell a different story-
The small frame house stands cold, alone
Its sagging porch, two elms I thought of once
as wondrous arms
seem weak- wasted limbs
about to break apart
My father's work shed too, lonely- a patch
of winter's snow
frozen on the roof
The barn, fat and warm inside I'm sure-
In these old sepia tones Phil sent upon Aunt Effie's death, I
feel the great sadness, emptiness—
everything simple, flat, so plain
Without these pictures I idealize-
Fresh bread baking in my mother's heavenly kitchen
The homemade Christmas tree glowing through a tiny window
Heat from a wood-burning stove-
The photos quiver with a certain reality
Wind howling through a hollow core
the heartache, precious pain
of that barren landscape
How hard we worked to make it seem more
than what it was

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Drury Brennan, “Die Welt” — Chicago Cultural Center, 2014

Drury Brennan, Die Welt
Untitled, (legal tender) — partial image:
Monumental site-specific hand-lettered calligraphy installation
Gouache and acrylic
Chicago Cultural Center, 2014


Untitled (legal tender) partial image:
Black Friday. Best Interests. Special Treatment. Privileges. The Awful Truth. Domestic Terrorism. To Serve And Protect. Black on Black on black-on-black on Black on black on Black. Private. Violations. Inside Job. Self-Defense. Health care. Axis of Evil. Stay ignorant, keep silent. Fit the profile. Vigilance. Hopeless situation Undesirables. Colored Silence. Hand Over Fist. A’merican Dreams built on new, quick schemes. Sleight of hand Out of hand. Merciless. 011 & Gas + Oil + Gas n’ Urri n Gash n + Carry. Homeland Security. Overnight Celebrity. Fly like an eagle. Eco-Friendly Packaging. Convenience charges. Bless your little heart. Uppity. At-Risk Youth. Wrong Place at the Wrong Time.Testy. No objection. White devils. Victim of circumstance. It’s just so unfortunate. Homicide. Accident. A right to life. Debt. Aging. Debt. Again. Debt. Aging. Debt. Again. Bet. Against. House. Bet. Vet. Debt. Aging. Debt. What have we learned? Who has learned? Have you learned? Who teaches? Who speaks for you? Silence.


Forgiveness Takes Everything And Nothing partial image:
War is not healthy for children and other living things.©
The war inside ourselves remains the critical conflict of our times, over and over again.
Can you truly accept that other beings are the same as you? Stop the wars.

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