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.
Friday, January 22, 2016
William Le Baron Jenney: First Congregational Church, Manistee, Michigan
Monday, January 18, 2016
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
Friday, January 15, 2016
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.
Monday, December 14, 2015
David Versluis’s new work: “a little bit of cathedral in it”
David Versluis and Nelson Wynia
“a little bit of cathedral in it”
2015
15'H x 10'W x 1'D
Welded aluminum, powder coated chrome
Aluminum skeletons from Kooima Laser Cutting
Dordt College Commission and Permanent Collection—Science Building Addition. Photographs by Carl Fictorie ©2015
The design and title of this piece is inspired and responds to this quote by engineer and writer Samuel Florman:
“Not only cathedrals, but every great engineering work is an expression of motivation and of purpose which cannot be divorced from religious implications. This truth provides the engineer with what many would assert to be the ultimate existential pleasure.
I do not want to get carried away with this point. The age of cathedral building is long past. And, as I have already said, less than one quarter of today’s engineers are engaged in construction activities of any sort. But every man-made structure, no matter how mundane has a little bit of cathedral in it, since man [humankind] cannot help but transcend himself as soon as he begins to design and construct.”(1)
- Florman, Samuel C. The Existential Pleasures of Engineering. 2nd ed. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1996. 125. Print.
L: David Versluis (designer) and Nelson Wynia (welder) installing hanging brackets and five foot x ten foot aluminum panels. Read More......
Sunday, December 6, 2015
Sunday, November 22, 2015
David Versluis’s new work: Tectonic Tower Maquette
David M. Versluis ©2015
Tectonic Tower Maquette
Welded aluminum, powder coated chrome
2015
14.5"H x 9"W x 5"D
Photography by Doug Burg
This piece is a response to the transitional tectonics and nature of the cultural landscape. Contour lines angle and change directions to form an architecture of triangular shapes or plates. These plates stack, layer, and off-set to suggest a balanced or unbalanced structure depending on your perspective—the whole piece becomes richer than the sum of individual parts. The imperfection of the welds and reflective surface help viewers to focus on their experience.
This piece is to some extent inspired by Herbert Bayer’s Leaning Spiral Tower. However, ironically, this piece seems to suggests a kind of:
“transautomatism”, which was a term used by artist, Friedensreich Hundertwasser Regentag (1928–2000)(1).
- Calvin Seerveld, Setting Things Right, CIVA Seen, 2013. 5.
Read More......
Thursday, November 19, 2015
“I AM American” art exhibit on display in the Dordt College
The Dordt College Campus Center Art Gallery will feature an exhibition titled “I AMerican,” curated by artist Sergio Gomez, whose work was recently featured at Dordt. The show, which explores the meaning of being an American, will run from November 12 to January 3, with a reception scheduled for November 16, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. The Gallery Talk at 6:45 p.m. will feature Rikki Heldt, Instructor of Language Studies and Abby Foreman, Associate Professor of Social Work.
Gomez says that “‘I AM American’ tells the story of many of us. As a Mexican immigrant, now naturalized American, my story is part of the collective story of this great nation.”
“I AM American” is not an exhibition about immigrants only, however. Some of the artists in the show have been born in the United States and some can even trace their history back to the American Indians.
“‘I AM American’ aims to engage the viewer in a conversation about the complexities of the American experience,” says Gomez. Participating artists use a variety of styles, visual forms, symbols, and metaphors to provide a window into the multi-cultural experience and suggest an answer to the question: Who is an American? Some works directly approach the theme of identity while others delve into the American experience.
Participating artists include Joanne Aono, Cesar Conde, Agustina Diez Sierra, Paulina Gal, Mario Gonzalez Jr., Salvador Jimenez-flores, Michael Klaus Schmidt, Chandrika Marla, Janice Meister, Joe Milosevich, InJung Oh, Joyce Owens, Steve Prince, Sally Ko, Marcos Ray, and Eden Ünlüata-Foley.
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