Profiling one of the June Show jurors

    We are preparing to take entries for our annual June Art Exhibit on the weekend of the 17^th and 18^th.  (Artists who are interested in entering should contact the art center for a prospectus, which contains rules and entry forms.)  The June Show itself will run June 1-20.  We’re proud to say this exhibit is now in its 52^nd year at the art center.

    Two jurors go through the entries and select the work which will be exhibited.  We’d like to profile one of these jurors today.

    Marvin Bartel is Emeritus Professor of Art at Goshen College in Indiana.  He was a member of the art faculty at Goshen College from 1970 through 2002, teaching art education, ceramics, photography and drafting/architectural design. 
    Prior to his time at Goshen he was tenured at Northeast Missouri State University (now Truman University), where he introduced ceramics to their art department.  Earlier, he taught art at Bethel College (Kansas) and headed the creative arts at Prairie View Mental Health Center in Newton, Kansas.  He began his career at Topeka High School in 1960 teaching ceramics, jewelry and other art courses.

    Dr. Bartel has master’s and doctor’s degrees in art education from the University of Kansas.  He majored in art at Bethel College (Kansas), also studying art at Washburn University and Wichita State University.  His pre-college years were spent attending public schools, doing chores, daydreaming, drawing and tinkering on a family farm in Kansas.

     Bartel is a practicing exhibiting artist, maintaining his own ceramics studio in Goshen.    His work has been shown in many national, international and regional exhibitions including the 24^th and 25^th Ceramic Nationals, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York; American Jewelry Today, Scranton, Pennsylvania; Craftsmen of the Central States, Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York, and many more. 

    His work is regularly selected for the Annual Elkhart Juried Regional Exhibitions, Midwest Museum of American Art, Elkhart, Indiana.  He won best in ceramics awards in 1992 and 1995.  He researched and invented a patented Kiln Heat Exchanger which significantly reduces fuel usage in a ceramics kiln.

    Bartel continues to be an active artist, writer, traveler and part-time art teacher.  He and his wife have three married children and five grandchildren.  He is a consultant in art education, building design and kiln design, as well as filling orders for clay tile work, sink basins, and other clay art projects.  Visit www.goshen.edu/~marvinpb/MB_bio.htm for more information.

    For information about the Wassenberg Art Center contact 419.238.6837, toll free 1.888.238.3837, or e-mail wassenberg@embarqmail.com.  The art center is located at 643 S. Washington St. in Van Wert and can be found on the internet at www.vanwert.com/wassenberg. 

Brushstrokes are the artist’s “handwriting”

    Everyone knows that painters use brushstrokes.  But did you know that each brushstroke is important to the success of the painting?  Brushstrokes can be thought of as the “handwriting” of an artist; every artist uses different brushstrokes, and brushstrokes can even show how skilled an artist is.

    Some artists paint so smoothly that no brushstrokes can be seen.  Norman Rockwell’s work is a good example of this.  If you look closely at a Rockwell painting, it’s almost impossible to determine that he used a brush.  The surface of the painting is as smooth as glass, and the colors are perfectly blended.  You can picture the artist gently stroking the painting with a fine brush to blend everything perfectly.

    For comparison, look at a painting by Vincent Van Gogh.  Not only can every brushstroke be clearly seen, but also it looks as if he actually used his brush to carve the picture out of paint.  Each stroke follows the line of the subject.  There is little or no blending; instead, Van Gogh dipped his brush in a color appropriate to the area he was painting (dark for shadows, light for highlights) and laid the paint down without going back to touch it again. 

    For some reason, the public often equates loose painting with sloppiness.  A watercolor teacher who works in a very free style commented that one student said he joined her class because he couldn’t draw and thought her style would be a good one to copy.  He didn’t realize that expressive brushstrokes are based on sound drawing ability.  Good artists literally draw with the paint.  Every stroke counts.  The artist must have the right size stroke, of the right value and color, in the right place. 

    Artist Emile Gruppe commented that as a young man he had the good fortune to watch the great Robert Henri paint.  “As a kid, I’d be amazed at the way he did a head.  One stroke for an eye – Bang!  Then another for the chin.  He was a master!  And when his pictures were finished, they’d look more like the person than the person” 

    There seem to be two basic kinds of painters.  Some like to work in line, and others prefer to work in mass.  Some, especially those who draw very well, tend to work with lines, enjoying the process of drawing the details of a scene.  If they look at a pile of leaves, they see the leaves first and work them into a pile. Others prefer to work in mass, seeing their subject in terms of large units and big relationships.  These artists look at the pile first, and use texture to get the effect without even painting the leaves.

    For each of these two kinds of painters, different kinds of brushstrokes are important.  The linear painters tend to use smaller brushes that allow great control, and each brushstroke is small and careful.    Their style is often referred to as “tight” painting.  Painters who work in mass – “loose” painters -- often use big, flat brushes that let them lay down a lot of paint at one time.

    If an artist is very, very good he or she may be proficient in both tight and loose painting.  We can return to Norman Rockwell for a good example.  Everyone knows about Rockwell’s fine, tight paintings which adorned magazine covers for years.  But when he felt his work was getting too tight, Rockwell broke a piece off a roofing shingle and used it as a “brush” to make fast, loose paintings for practice.   If you’re an artist who would like to loosen up, this is a good method.  You can also paint with Q-tips, toothpicks, toothbrushes, sticks, and your fingers.  When you go back to using a brush, you may find that this kind of “extreme painting” practice helps you make more interesting brushstrokes.