Barry is able to take simple grayscale photos and turn them into digital
engravings -very similar to the actual intaglio process found in classical
engraving.  He has been collaborating with Wall Street Journal artists to
achieve exact computerized versions of the portrait work seen in the
Journal.
If you have ever wondered what CLU President, Chris Kimball, would look like
in the Wall Street Journal, look no further. In this version, we see
President Kimball as he might appear on CLU currency. Don¹t worry, the Art
Department has no plans to create a CLU monetary system!

3.oo pm Saturday afternoon 26th April. Kwan Fong Gallery.

Works upstairs by Krista.

Bret Bays loads in his sculpture.

Works line the stairway. 

On Friday evening, John Solem was at the gallery at Overton Hall for the opening of his exhibition,” The McKinley Suite: Encounter with the Sacred”.

Seated: center, John Solem, right, J.T. Ledbetter

In the slide show he told us more about the adventure and how the etchings emerged. “1976 was the bicentennial year, and the plan was to reach the summit of Mt McKinley on July, 4. Of course at such latitude the light never disappears during the day at that time of year.” The difficulty of the climb, the weather, the importance of the team effort, and endurance shaped their experience. “We had a feeling of being close to the spiritual aspect of the world” John said.

“In the etching called “Everywhere is down” I wrapped up everything with wings.” The viewer is taken in this vertiginous flight over the summit of Mt McKinley, and the accompanying haiku by Jack Ledbetter reflects just that.

  From the white summit
  the world becomes great wings,
  wanting you to fly!

The expedition took 16 days to go up and 5 days to go down. As they were progressing the mountains were ever changing and they experienced mountain weather. “The artist dilemna was: what do you do when you are in a storm and can’t see anything? In “Storm below Denali Pass”, the tents are at the bottom and the top is a tremendous swirl of abstract shapes to indicate the movement and the violence. I didn’t work from sketches, but from photographs and abstractions, and this work is a combination really.”

  Storm gather above.
  Keep emotions close inside.
  Taste the furious snow.

The crevasses, the peaks, the various shapes the snow takes at the top of a ridge, the black ice, the glacier, and the storm all appear in John Solem’s etchings in a mixture of imaginative and natural shapes which shows the power of the mountains.

“As an artist I had to find out who I was and when you do this you define yourself, whatever it is you feel you should share with people. As you grow older it is determining; moving from here to the art studio; the embodiment and the experience that you bring to it that flows through you. I call that the encounter with the Sacred.”

“This has defined my life. It has helped me through a lot.” Then he quoted: “Press on, talent is wasted. Education alone is not the key. Persistence, determination and patience are omnipotent.”

The book Blue Galaxy Iris where you can find reproductions of the work by John Solem exhibited at the gallery accompanied by the haiku by J.T. Ledbetter is for sale, as well as three acrylic paintings.
Please contact Nathan Tierney, Philosophy department, California Lutheran University
tel: (805) 493-3232.

The gallery at Overton Hall is open to the public from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It is located on Memorial Parkway on the Thousand Oaks campus.
The exhibit is sponsored by CLU’s Art Department and the Kwan Fong Gallery of Art and Culture

John Solem, a former art professor will exhibit his viscosity etchings of Alaska’s Mount McKinley from Oct. 5 through Nov. 13 at the gallery at Overton Hall.
I interviewed Nathan Tierney, professor of philosophy at CLU and Art Department Chair, who organizes the exhibition and this is what he said: “John retired in 1995. He is in his 70’s now, and he has been a mainstay of the university for decades. I have admired his art for years. In the work exhibited here he recounts his discovery of the Mount McKinley using the viscosity method.
John’s philosophy- though he wouldn’t use the word – is that in order to represent Nature the Artist should become pat of it. He immerses himself in Nature for he sees the artist both as participating in and replicating Nature. I first came to know John’s work through his ceramics. He had a period where he focused on the mysterious representation of the Natural World. When you encounter a grotto, you see it first externally, but it is inside that lies its true beauty. Entering into that grotto is like entering into the heart of nature.

In this exhibition you will discover 12 etchings, 2 ceramics, 3 new oils paintings. The etchings have been donated to the university. He and John Ledbetter collaborated on “Blue Galaxy Iris: Connecting with Beauty and Nature’s Rhythm”. This book illustrates the artistic vision, in both the poetic form and the art work. For the exhibition each etching will be presented with a Haiku. The etchings are multi-perspectival. Conceptually it is a very difficult process. The original title for this exhibition was “Encounter with the sacred, from mountain top to artist’s studio” and was later changed.

Mike Adams, from the Creative Media department and a former student of John Solem said ”It was fascinating to see him making these etchings. They have a very high relief texture and they are multiple-colour etchings. Also they are very large in size, about 3 foot square, compared with other etchings. He created shapes with swivels on very deep plates.”
Solem began teaching printmaking and etching at Cal Lutheran in 1966. Three years later, he met Krishna Reddy, who had helped develop the viscosity method of color printmaking in Paris. Solem found that the sculptured relief method of working in zinc with successive layers of ink rolled onto a single plate was a perfect way to convey the colors and textures of his landscapes. He shared this technique with his students.
Also in 1966, Solem took a Sierra Club Mountaineering Training Course and began mountain climbing. He created “The McKinley Suite” of 12 viscosity etchings after scaling North America’s highest peak in 1976. `John Solem now lives in Coarsegold, near Yosemite.

John Solem’s “The McKinley Suite: Encounter with the Sacred” will be on exhibit in the gallery at Overton Hall. An opening reception will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 5.
Admission is free.
The gallery at Overton Hall is open to the public from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It is located on Memorial Parkway on the Thousand Oaks campus.
The exhibit is sponsored by CLU’s Art Department and the Kwan Fong Gallery of Art and Culture. For more information, contact Nathan Tierney at (805) 493-3232.