Professor
Glen William Brunken usually taught a course in drawing every summer at the university
where I was an art student from the fall of 1985 to the spring of 1989. During my studies for the Bachelor of Fine
Arts degree, I always took Prof.
Brunken’s summer drawing classes each year.
It was the only time Prof. Brunken taught drawing and I wanted to study
with him because I had admired his paintings when I saw them in an exhibition. In fact, I was so inspired by his art that it
led me to seek him out as a teacher. I
wanted to study painting with the man
who had created the most exciting paintings I had ever seen! I had heard that he taught at the university
and that is what led me there to study. Though
I had intended to study painting with him, it never really happened. It was
because he did not teach painting at the time I attended the university.
During
the regular semesters, I took printmaking with Prof. Brunken. But, in the summer courses he would
focus on drawing. It was in those intense
early morning drawing classes that I
would absorb life lessons and expand the
core beliefs of my art philosophy. I listened to him teaching every day in that
large drawing studio on the second floor of the spacious old building known as
West Hall. We students stood at our
easels hour after hour, day after day. Prof.
Brunken once reminded me that “When the Muse comes, you better be standing at
your easel.”
We did
not have air conditioning but the wall of open windows was adequate. A slight breeze would waft across
the large room; it was enough to keep us going as we labored at our easels,
drawing from the live model. We stood in
a circle around the model’s platform. The room had a well worn floor.from
generations of art students who learned the rudiments of making art with
various professors. As we struggled to find the forms and planes of the figure,
we kept our eyes focused on the nude
models who took a pose on the model’s platform. That platform became the center of the room
and the apex of the world that connected us to our internal longings to find
balance and purpose as artists. We held
pieces of black charcoal sticks, worn down lead pencils, blocks of waxy crayons,
and even brushes and paints as we slashed, swooped, smudged, and splattered the
large sheets of drawing papers that were clipped onto the thick, heavy, drawing
boards held upright on our tall metal easels.
After the
four hours of drawing, my hands, arms, face, and clothing would be covered with
the materials I had used for my drawings. It was so exciting and I often felt
like a small child who was playing in the mud – joyous and forbidden. It seemed
that for the first time in my life, I could get very dirty and I was breaking
the rules – and it was all okay. I relished those summer days making drawings
and feeling like I was part of something so special, there with my classmates,
and Prof. Brunken.
"My Life as a Wave"
Etching by Glen Brunken
We worked
away at the drawings before us each day. Prof. Brunken would walk about the
room. He stopped beside each of us, looked at what we were doing in our
drawings, and made comments and suggestions.
Often he would make a joke and laugh about what he saw on the page. And,
we laughed with him. He had a sharp wit
and a critical eye. His ability to focus in on the most minute bit of
information that a student needed was uncanny.
Before I
started going to the university, I had been a painter who was enchanted with
the landscape and had been making paintings that would be called “painterly
realism.” I painted every day once I
started painting at the age of 36. I
lived and breathed painting and art. Before I went to sleep at night, I would
read from one of my art books and study the photographs of drawings and
paintings. I visited art exhibitions and looked closely at each work that
interested me, trying to learn from them and bring information and techniques
into my own work. I had studied for six years taking private classes with an
artist; and then with a teacher at a
local art center.
All of
this eventually led me to expand my art education and begin work on an art
degree at the university. At the age of 42, I was now a nervous freshman
student. I was surrounded in the
classroom by young students who were the age of my own children. In fact, I had
grandchildren, too! I tried not to be
self-conscious or intimidated by their
youth but to just keep my own sense of purpose in my mind. I was there to learn
everything I could about everything I could study. I felt like a child who was
on a merry-go-round and I was reaching out to capture the brass ring. It was
the most exciting time of my life, to return to a classroom as an adult filled with
desires and a passion to spend the rest of my life making art. It was as though
the sky had opened above my head as I whirled around on that merry-go-round,
reaching out into the future. The vast universe had opened up to me and I was
learning to fly into the clouds with a
brand new pair of wings.
Prof.
Brunken was my advisor. He encouraged me to take courses in everything and
particularly in the things I knew nothing about. I began this adventure into the studies of
everything, with courses in Geology, Biology, and Sociology. I never found a
course I did not like, and I never found a course that was “easy.” I put
everything I had into each of the courses I had and each of those disciplines
gave me new information that I could take back to my art.
I had a
secret, hidden desire as I entered the university fine arts program.
My goal was to
learn how to do abstract art. I had seen some abstract paintings in my gallery
visits and I was swept away by the magic and depth of it. There was something
so mysterious about abstract painting, and it pulled me into it. It gave me an
emotional response like nothing else had done. I bought several books on this
way of working and did a lot of
experiments on my own before I started classes.
Soon, my desire to make abstract art came to the forefront of my mind, and I began changing. I did abstract art in my dreams at
night; during the days I struggled to find the way to learn how to do it in the
classroom.
It was
exciting and yet it was frightening to me. I had to leave my comfort zone and
change my ways of thinking and working. Prof. Brunken would be the catalyst
that would push me over the edge into this new consciousness and understanding of the world. Art making,
passed from being a perceptual notion, to being conceptual. One morning Prof. Brunken paused during one of
our little gatherings. He smiled broadly and said, “The more I think of
scribbling, the more I like it!” He
seemed to be a child again as he spoke to us about the joys of freedom of
expression. He affirmed for us that we
were able to be a child again, to scribble.
This was the message of the day.
It was all okay and I was free to play and enjoy the physical activity of
drawing with a passion.
From time
to time throughout the morning sessions, we would take breaks from our
work. Often, we would gather around
Prof. Brunken. He would laugh and talk with us about making art; his own
creative life journey; his views on drawing; and even his views on time and
place. He would take some of our
drawings and lay them out, one by one as he
pointed out what was “working” in
that drawing and why it was important. He taught by emphasizing the positive
things he saw. And, it was interesting now that I look back on it because it
did not matter if you were an art major at all. Each student was treated the
same and each had his full attention.
One of
the things we did every day on our own after class was over was to make many
pages of rapid and small drawings in our sketchbook. They were called “gesture
drawings” I would soon learn. We had been instructed to fill pages of our
sketchbooks with those little drawings. There would be about 20 or more on a
single page and we used drawing pencils or black ink pens to do them. When he gathered our sketchbooks and went
through them, he would make a little asterisk mark beside the ones that he
thought were the best ones. It was very
affirming to look through our books after he gave them back to us and find a
few of those little stars beside one of our “gestures.”
As the
days went by, my understanding of the gestures of life grew. We made gesture
drawings as homework; we made gesture drawing on the very large sheets of
drawing papers in class. We learned to look into the surface of a figure; quickly
assess the gesture that was creating what we were looking at when a person
walked past us. We saw gestures at a distance; we saw gestures in the trees; in
flowers blowing in a field; a person
walking far away down the busy street; the furniture in the art studio. “Everything
in our world holds a gesture,” he said.
That gesture is the moving, living, life form of the thing we are viewing. It
is what gives things life, movement, and stability.
Many
years later, when I became an art professor, my students would learn all about
gestures, too. We practiced looking for gestures in our classroom, in our
drawings, sculptures, fiber arts, and in our paintings.
On one
occasion, I observed Prof. Brunken as he was judging an art exhibition. He
looked at a sculpture and said,
This person needs to take some drawing classes. This sculpture has a
lack of understanding of structure. It looks like the artist does not
know how to draw.
He could
look at an art work and know if a person had studied drawing and understood gesture. We learned how to do that ourselves through being around him in the
classroom and in our discussions together as he looked at our drawings.
In the
many years I have made art after leaving the classrooms of Prof. Brunken,
I
have observed everything in life through the
lens of gesture that I began to
develop as an eager student. After
school days were over for me, I carried a sketchbook on all my travels. In
those books I made gestures of the world I was experiencing. I wrote poems and
reflections, and did sketches every day as I traveled and taught classes to my
own students. As an art professor, I
passed down the teachings I had learned in Prof. Brunken’s classrooms during
those long ago hot summer mornings.
Just a
few days ago as I traveled by car with my daughter, I spoke to her about gestures and she began
to see them as we traveled down the highway together. She is a self-taught
artist, and I know that once she begins to see gestures her own art will grow, too. One is never the
same after we begin to see gestures.
The smallest
things in our daily life begin to dance
before our eyes when we look more closely at any movement. Begin to think about
what is beneath the surface and see the spirit of the thing there; the movement
and the embrace of the inner core of all of life present and visible to us as
we stand in awe while looking at someone or some thing. A gesture sends a
visual signal to an onlooker. While we engage in the various movements and acts
of life, every moment of every day, we are typically unaware of the message
that an onlooker is getting by watching us.
Many of our actions are basically non-social, having to do with
problems of personal body care, body comfort and body transportation; we clean
and groom ourselves with a variety of scratchings, rubbings and wipings; we
cough, yawn and stretch our limbs; we eat and drink; we prop ourselves up in
restful postures, folding our arms and crossing our legs; we sit, stand, squat
and recline, in a whole range of different positions; we crawl, walk and run in
varying gaits and styles. But although we do these things for our own benefit,
we are not always unaccompanied when we do them. Our companions learn a great
deal about us from these 'personal' actions - not merely that we are scratching
because we itch or that we are running because we are late, but also, from the
way we do them, what kind of personalities we possess and what mood we are in
at the time.” (From Manwatching by
Desmond Morris.)
Learning
to recognize the gestures of life can be difficult.
We are so
accustomed to taking a quick glance at everything and only seeing the surface
of everything. Seeing requires more time. Seeing is a skill that has to be
practiced and learned and it takes a lot of deliberate time to do it. Think of
all the many images your eyes view every day as they rapidly flash before you.
There are so many you cannot even see them because seeing comes slowly and it
comes in layers. Seeing requires intention.
One day
after Prof. Brunken had looked through my latest group of gestures in my
sketchbook he turned to look at me and he said,
“Lynda,
you need to look at this gesture drawing until you begin to realize it is
beautiful. In fact, cut this one out of
your sketchbook and put it in a frame. Put it in a place where you can see it.
Look at it often. Keep looking at it until you understand that it is
beautiful. For many years that framed
gesture drawing had a prominent place in my home.
Today, I
needed to write an artist statement about my own art. My statement will be
included in an exhibition I will be doing at a museum gallery next spring. I
thought about Prof. Brunken, and I began to realize that what I need to focus
on in my statement is the central theme of everything I do. It is the gesture
that is at the core of it all.
Note:
Written in memory of Professor Glen Brunken (1943-2013).
Glen taught at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania for 40 years (1969 – 2009 He was killed in a tragic accident, June 3,2013, when he fell through a glass door at a local restaurant in Slippery Rock, PA.
You can find additional information on “Gesture” at:
Written June 21, 2013.
Lynda McKinney Lambert. Copyright 2013. All rights reserved.
