ART at Kendal at Granville

If you are reading this on your computer, you no doubt have some familiarity with the vagaries of computes such as crashes and frozen screens. When I discovered that the subject of Reed Browning’s most recent blog was the same as mine, I felt as though my computer had frozen and then crashed.  After reading what he wrote I have decided to post my blog with this preface.  I believe that Reed’s comments serve to back up the premise that led to my decision to write about art.  I also believe that my blog focuses on how we arrived at the events about which he has written.

Because of the extent to which ART permeates our lives here at Kendal at Granville I often think  the word should be printed in capital letters followed by exclamation points.  It all began with Jane Heller, an artist who was one of the four persons vitally involved in bringing Kendal at Granville into being.  Ever since then she has given us most generously the benefits of her talents as an artist.  It continued when the building that emerged from those dreams included an Art Studio and an Art Gallery. Then it happened as in the film, Dream Field, “If you build it, they will come.”  Artists and art enthusiasts began to come and they are still coming.

Thus far eighty-five of them have come.  This includes fifty-seven artists who create art and forty-six art enthusiasts who share items from their personal art collections   The fact that some may be counted as both artists and art enthusiasts accounts for the apparent discrepancy as to the total number who have come.

 Our artists include sixteen painters, thirty-one fiber artists, and eleven photographers. Thirty-four persons have provided items for our display cabinet and eighteen have made items available for the art gallery.   This count doesn't include all of our residents who come to our art opening receptions nor the people who create small artistic vignettes on the shelves just outside the doors to their apartments or hang art on the wall outside their apartments. 

In addition to those who came as artists two persons have developed their latent abilities to paint by taking advantage of the Art Studio and the willingness of a resident artist to teach. A painting activity in assisted living uncovered the hidden ability of another resident. Currently one of our residents, in her 90’s, is learning to draw portraits.  So not only do they come as artists but they become artists after they arrive.
Hedda von Goeben, one of our most ardent artists and art enthusiasts has enrolled regularly in art classes at Denison University with the goal of working as a ceramist.  Once she finished the course, Denison gave her the opportunity to teach ceramics to fellow residents. Eight residents have been enthusiastic participants in her classes and have demonstrated their artistic bent by producing a variety of ceramic objects which have been shown in our display cabinet.

 For the first four years Jane Heller was the curator for the Art Gallery arranging for a new art show every month featuring area artists..  With the passage of time it became evident that there was a need for others to help with the work of maintaining the gallery.  Thus in 2009 the Gallery Committee came into being.   More in my next blog about the work of this committee

Our Continuing Encounters with Art

Two grand visual arts events have come to fruition at Kendal this spring. And thus, even as we have already been celebrating the arrival of several artists into our community and our consequent emergence as a Licking County art colony, we have also become the venue for some engaging encounters with the works of exciting artists, both present and past.

First, we'll consider the contemporary artists. Throughout April and May the resident-run gallery committee has arranged for an exhibition of the creations of four Columbus-based artists to be on display. All four artists are associated with the Goodwill Art Studio and Gallery. In aggregate, these works take the viewer through a variety of alternative worlds, envisioned through a variety of media. (At this point I must say: caveat lector. I am not an artist and can only be grateful that some people are gifted enough to be able to accomplish what these folks do. Also, I know of no vocabulary that allows one to convey the complex set of responses that a person – in this case, me – feels when one's sensibilities are touched by visual or aural art. But still, humankind can't help but talk about art's impact, and so, here we go!)

Deborah Griffing exhibits both dolls and paintings. I found that her dolls could somehow (and simultaneously) invite cuddling and portend danger, and that her paintings, with their animal forms and floating shapes, could nudge my psychic equilibrium a bit off center.  Kate Gorman's contributions are a group of wall quilts that rock with color and achieve their effects through abstract forms and a readiness to violate apparent borders. Kristen Spickard displays a set of haunting miniatures that began their artifactual lives as photographs and have been transformed into evocative silver-gelatin prints. Cody Miller, whose paintings feature marvelous eyes, manages to impress me as the most internal of the artists, inviting the viewer's speculation about the thoughts that lie in the mind of the elusive figure on the canvas.

Second, we have launched our six-part program entitled "Adventures in Art at Kendal." This is a series of hour-long interactive encounters with docents and paintings at the Cleveland Museum of Art and has been organized in part with a grant from the Granville Arts Commission. The advance interest in this program in art history was so great that Kendal was obliged to establish queues among both residents and prospective residents in an effort to be fair in accommodating the hopes of members of both groups.

The first session, held on April 30, focused on Impressionism, and since I was not lucky enough to make the cut for attending this session, I can only report on it second-hand. It turned out to be a learning experience, in both implications of that term. To begin with the awkward news: not everything went quite as smoothly on this maiden voyage as we might have wished. But we had expected glitches (that's what maiden voyages are for), and they are being addressed. And in any case – now comes the happy news – they did not affect the central features of the program: the opportunity to view Museum masterpieces, and the chance to engage a museum expert in conversations about them. After the session the attendees proceeded with their own discussion of impressionism and then enjoyed a fine Kendal meal at which – what else? – impressionism was still discussed. The buzz at these post-session events was very positive.

The email feedback which has been received has also been quite positive, and new requests to get into the queue have appeared. Meanwhile, in response to suggestions from several participants, we are now exploring the possibility of organizing a bus trip or two to the Cleveland Museum of Art later this year.

All of this is good news for the art-conscious community at Kendal.