Contributing to this post are Roger Green, April Kingsley and Gilda Snowden with a gentle thump on the noggin from Lois Teicher.

The Michigan Masters Invitational Exhibit is at The Kresge Art Museum through July 31, 2009

Greg Constantine, Eroded Veneer, acrylic on canvas and wood, 42 X 36 X4
inches. Kresge Art Museum, Michigan State University, loan from the artist.

With thirty nine artists in seven collectives opening an exhibit at one end of town a phenomenal show with artists from Beijing and Detroit on the other and countless exceptional exhibits in between, it isn’t difficult to take a large, active creative community for granted. Then the Kresge Art Museum announced the the Michigan Masters Invitational honoring their 50th Year and created the challenge of selecting “the most exciting and inventive in the state” for Curator, April Kingsley.

Kingsley, who became Curator at the Kresge Art Museum in 1999, received her Ph.D. from City University of New York, taught art history at The School of Visual Arts, the City College of New York, Queens College, and the Rhode Island School of Design. She grew up in New York City and spent most of her life there before coming to Kresge. “I love living here and work has been pure pleasure, especially this project, the Michigan Masters Invitational Exhibition”, she said.

Dr. Kingsley knew the work of the Michigan artists showing in New York over the years because she was an art critic for the Village Voice, Newsweek and various other art magazines. She knew of the area’s African American artists because of her traveling exhibition of African American Abstraction. She worked at the American Craft Museum in the 1990s so the ceramists and fiber artists included in the Masters Exhibit were familiar names. For the rest she relied on the recommendations of various knowledgeable curators and arts organizers around the state.

People like Dennis Nawrocki, Joseph Becherer, Jackie Ruttinger, Greg Wittkopp, Cedric Tai, Gene Jenneman and dealers David Klein, Susanne Hilberry, George N’Namdi, Corinne Lemberg and Darlene

Robert Freese, Eight Minutes On Route 20, 2009ink drawing and mixed media,
11 X 20 inches.Kresge Art Museum, Michigan State University, loan from the artist.

Carroll were very helpful. In selecting the artists from a very large pool of excellent practitioners the criteria of showing and being known out side of Michigan was used.The artist had to be known nationally and internationally not just locally.

Since half of the artists are sculptors it was decided to use existing examples at or near Michigan State University for their major representations and to include smaller works in the museum by Richard Hunt, Charles McGee, Russell Thayer and David Barr. Unless their single representation was very large, a second work was generally included for each artist.

“The paintings and sculptures are abstract and figurative, in varying sizes and media, and wall-

Rufus Snoddy, Zen Painting, 1994, acrylic canvas,
mixed media, 88 X36X8 inches.Kresge Art Museum,
Michigan State University, loan from the artist”

floor- or ceiling- dependent. Most are rich in color, though a few are monochrome. Minimalism is present, Pattern & Decoration, realism, geometry, video, narrative, literary and conceptual underpinnings, and even playfulness. It is a sample of the tremendous richness of the visual arts in this state”, said Kingsley.

At first Kingsley though that she could limit the selection of “ the best of the vetted best” to twenty artists but that number quickly grew and the size of the exhibit and available space became an issue. After wrestling with size and quantity the 2009 Michigan Masters Exhibition does capture the diversity of great artistic icons who have walked among us in the streets of Detroit and who enrich the areas of the state where fudgies roam.

This is the way that Roger Green described the exhibit in his essay “Michigan Art: Splendid Present and Hopeful Future”:
The Michigan Masters Invitational Exhibit is an extraordinary enterprise. Studiously with taste, it brings together works by 30 artists deemed the most inventive and proficient of the many talents active in the state today. Artworks assembled in the invitational — best of the vetted best — stimulate, challenge and reward receptive viewers in myriad ways.

But that’s not all. Visitors to the exhibit would need to travel to many corners of Michigan to see the collected works. The opportunity their temporary assembly provides at Michigan State University is unmatched (although permanent outdoor sculptures by some of the participating artists grace the campus).

More important, the invitational may be perceived as a welcome if perhaps unexpected beacon of hope. Visual culture in Michigan, the exhibit shows, is a bright spot in a season of economic gloom.

Artists chosen for the exhibit come from lists submitted by Michigan museum directors, critics, educators and other professionals knowledgeable about art production here. Yet in making final selections Kresge Art Museum curator April Kingsley imposed an additional demand.

“I wanted their range to be outside of Michigan,” she explained about the invitees. “Not just to show in Michigan, but to be seen in Chicago, New York and even internationally.” So the selected artists share a level of appreciation achieved out-of-state. Savvy, outsiders’ admiration elevates the exhibit to exceptional heights.

The invited artists comprise a remarkably if unsurprisingly diverse group. “Of course there’s a lot of Detroit emphasis,” Kingsley said about Michigan’s major metropolis and cultural hub; in particular, works from Cranbrook Academy of Art

Gilda Snowden, Bright Stars at Night RED,2007, acrylic on canvass, 60X48
inches, Kresge Art Museum, Michigan State University, loan from the artist.

in Bloomfield Hills are conspicuous. Still, many parts of Michigan, urban and rural, are represented.

So are artists of different ages, genders and races, working in dissimilar styles and media while pursuing divergent ends. Look for realist, variously abstracted and conceptual art. Expect to see paintings, sculptures, fiber and ceramic works, together with experimental pieces in new or adventurously mixed media. Installation and video art are, it’s true, sparsely represented — but for good reason. While both are practiced in Michigan, often compellingly, their absence in the exhibit reflects their relative dearth statewide.

Many of the participating artists are concerned with formal problem solving, with referencing art history or with expanding the physical and expressive bounds of art media. Other artists focus on broader issues, among them aspects of the Midwest region, the search for spiritual meaning, the role of technology and the shifting of gender roles in the 21st century.

Bottom line, it’s a dense, multifarious show, reflecting the varied regional, demographic and other differences that undergrid and define Michigan as a state. Initially, the mix of assembled works may perplex some viewers. Yet perceptible affinities in medium and intent provide a roadmap for navigating the show. - Roger Green

The artists in the Michigan Masters Invitational Exhibit include Hartmut Austen, David Bar, Mark Chatterley, Yueh-mei Cheng, Greg Constatntine, Larry Cressman, Stephen Duren, Beverly Fishman, Norbert J. Freese, Michael Hall, Richard Hunt, Gerhardt Knodel, Stephen Magsig, Charles McGee, Allie McGhee, Heather McGill, Mark Newport, Gordon Newton, Charles Pompilius,Tom Rice, John Rowland, Anders Ruhwald, Rufus Snoddy, Gilda Snowden, John Stephenson, Lois Teicher, Russell Thayer, Robert Wilber and Marie Woo. A 68-page color catalogue with information on each artist and Roger Green’s complete essay is available for purchase from the museum gift shop. The exhibition is funded in part by the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Gilda Snowden has given us this brief glimpse of an exhibit that everyone should visit.