Three new exhibits open at the Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery on Sunday, May 1, with a reception that day from 2 to 4 p.m. and exhibition discussions beginning at 2:30 p.m. Featured exhibits include Kansas Clay Connections 2; works by Hays artist Gordon Sherman; and block prints by Birger Sandzén contemporary Helen West Heller.
Kansas Clay Connections 2 will feature ceramics by over 100 artists with some connection to the Sunflower State. The exhibition has been organized by Kansas native Marko Fields, now of Minneapolis, Minn. and Larry Peters of Topeka in curatorial partnership with the Sandzén Gallery. Historically significant potters and ceramicists will be shown alongside those still active in the field. Many of the artists have taught throughout the state, while others produced work on a full time basis.
Innocence and Science features the work by Hays artist Gordon Sherman. Sherman is a professor of drawing and printmaking at Fort Hays State University. In addition to teaching, he has participated in over 350 regional, national, and international exhibits since 1976. He has been recognized with over 100 awards and juror recognitions. Regarding the work in the show he writes, “Mysteriousness and appointed iconography has always been a foundation of my visual development. My imagery contains unexpected eloquent gestures that reveal a fleeting moment of time or spontaneity, a strong sense of place that demands close attention. Manipulation of this “vocabulary” reveals my concern for human relationship to the environment and potential harmful vestiges of culture’s growth and decay with a topographical measurement of the journey.”
The exhibition Helen West Heller: The Art of a Prairie Child features more than sixty examples of Heller’s printmaking and illustration work. Although today the artist is largely forgotten, during her lifetime Heller (1872-1955) was well known for her expressive paintings, prints, and poetry, as well as for her depression-era WPA murals and mosaics, and her woodcuts reproduced in the New York Times. The last major showing of the Chicago artist’s career was organized by the Smithsonian Institution’s department of graphic art in 1948, the year following publication of Heller’s book Woodcuts USA (1947).
Lindsborg’s Bethany College holdings of 35 Helen West Heller woodcut prints are the nucleus of the Sandzén Gallery exhibition, but two private collections have loaned additional works to provide a fuller glimpse into the artist’s career. Kent Garlinghouse of New York, whose mother was a close friend of the artist, has loaned 19 prints. Heller’s biographer, Larry Stanfel of Montana, has lent several books which carry illustrations by the prolific artist. Stanfel’s two new books on Heller will be available for purchase at the Gallery during the exhibition, Uncompromising Souls: The Lives of and Work of Artists Helen West Heller and Husband Roger, and, The Complete Poetry of Helen West Heller, generously illustrated with her woodcut art.
In the April 14, 1925, art section of the Chicago Evening Post, a 31-syllable “tanka” poem by Helen West Heller appeared, praising the lithographs of Bethany College professor Birger Sandzén (1871-1954). Heller had just returned from a visit to Lindsborg, where she was invited by Sandzén to show six of her woodcut prints in the college’s annual Midwest Art Exhibition that always accompanies performances of Handel’s Messiah oratorio. The Chicago artist was invited back to show in the spring exhibition of 1926 and for a larger show of her prints and watercolors in 1927. Heller and Sandzén most likely met as fellow artists in Chicago’s wide-ranging exhibition venues.
The Sandzén Gallery is located at 401 North First Street in Lindsborg. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and 1 to 5 p.m. on Sunday. The Gallery is closed on Mondays. Admission is free, with donations welcome. Docent tours for groups are available by two-week advance appointment with the Gallery. For more information about Birger Sandzén and the Gallery visit the website www.sandzen.org or telephone (785) 227-2220.