Ancient Kansas 2 by Doug Billings
The Midwest Art Exhibition was founded in 1899 by three local Lindsborg artists – Birger Sandzén, Carl Lotave, and G. N. Malm – as a complement to the annual Messiah Festival held at Bethany College. Today, it represents the longest running annual art exhibition in Kansas and primarily features works by artists invited by the Sandzén Gallery or from the Gallery's permanent collection.
Wayne Conyers has been an artist for his entire life, either as a student, working artist, educator, or all. He retired a few years ago after teaching for 45 years, 35 of those at McPherson College. He earned degrees from Bethany College, the University of Missouri in Kansas City, and Fort Hays State University. His retrospective begins with work from 1980 and continues into the present. "Looking back, that is the year that I first started developing my personal “style” of tightly controlled watercolor paintings. Pencil and ink drawings gave way to watercolor paintings which progressively increased in detail and took increasingly longer to create. Many pieces here took months to develop, others a year or two." He continues, “All my paintings begin with a concept, and they have a story to tell. Personal meaning is my pursuit and, almost always, the title is determined before I begin any preliminary sketches. I enjoy setting up a visual problem and then finding a solution that has visual impact--creating an image that fits the title.”
Tandem Freefalling by Wayne ConyersMuch like Conyers, Wichita artist Brian Hinkle has been an active artist for decades. He received an M.F.A. from Wichita State University and has been steadily painting ever since. Teaching has occupied much of that time, but he also was the former gallery director at Wichita Center for the Arts (now MarkArts). His works can be found throughout the United States, along with Germany and Sweden. His statement regarding his work is brief… “Enigma. Inexplicable Mystery. A fleeting glimpse beyond. The meaning of art and life remains unknown. The human condition is an enigma.”
The third exhibition features selections from the Society of American Graphic Artists’ (SAGA) 89th Annual Members Exhibition. Based in New York, it features printmakers from around the country and was selected by Gallery curator, Cori Sherman North, and director, Ron Michael. Birger Sandzen was an active member during his lifetime, so it’s appropriate that the show travels to the Gallery named in his honor.
Sandzén was first introduced to fine prints when he was ten years old and taking art lessons at boarding school where his teacher gave him a set of lithographs to copy. Once the artist was firmly settled in central Kansas and teaching at Bethany College, he began collecting original fine art prints. Purchasing new pieces from McPherson-based art dealer Carl J. Smalley and from exhibitions held around the state enlarged the artist's personal print collection as well as Bethany's. When his daughter Margaret married Charles Pelham Greenough 3rd in 1942, Sandzén found a kindred spirit as his son-in-law's print collection was as varied and deep as his own. Greenough spent the next decade focused on organizing a print catalogue raisonné for all of Sandzén's lithographs, blockprints, and drypoints. The family collection was eventually inherited by the Greenoughs, who opened the Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery in 1957 to host guest artists and to share their paintings, prints, and sculpture with a wider audience. This exhibition of prints from the Gallery's permanent collection highlights an astonishing range: Japanese color woodcuts, French revival landscape etchings, early German blockprints, "old masters" including Rembrandt and Dürer, exquisite European engravings, B.J.O. Nordfeldt white-line woodcuts, American Regional lithographs including Grant Wood, and more.
Mood Indigo detail by Brian Hinkle