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STATE-RUN GALLERIES

AS ENDOWMENTS DRY UP, STATES ARE
LOOKING FOR CREATIVE WAYS TO SUPPORT ART.
THEY MIGHT LOOK TO ILLINOIS' ARTISAN SHOPS

by Jennifer Halperin

Locals say the sprawling junkyard in Dowell is haunted. When the wind whistles through piles of rusting metal and broken-down cars they can hear the cries of men trapped long ago in the now-abandoned coal mine beneath the modern wasteland. Yet Alfred Vorreyer found art in that troubled field. A few years ago, the sculptor was traveling through southern Illinois from Brownsville, Texas, on his way home to south suburban New Lenox. He stopped to take in some regional sites, and a local blacksmith told him the lore of the junkyard. Vorreyer couldn't resist a look around. "Walking through there, you could really feel what he meant," he recalls. "It was just eerie. But for me, there was a lot I could use. There had been flooding that year, and a lot of the farmers couldn't get into their fields. They were bringing old farm equipment to the junkyard just to make some money." Vorreyer used the salvage in his forged iron sculptures, which he displays in galleries all over the country. Among his favorite places are the three artisan shops run by the state. It was at one of those shops, Vorreyer says, that former Gov. James R. Thompson spotted his sculptures and decided to take four of them to Japan as gifts.

Alfred Vorreyer of New Lenox forges scrap iron into art.

It's no surprise that Thompson frequents the artisan shops. He launched the Illinois Artisans Program, which turns 11 years old this month, says Director Ellen Gantner.

"As many people know, Thompson was a great lover of travel, the arts and crafts," she says. "He wanted Illinois crafts to be seen, enjoyed and purchased, so he helped create this program. Before that, there were no displays of crafts

Illinois Issues December 1996 / 15

from our state in any organized sense."

Nearly 1,400 Illinois painters, sculptors, metal workers, wood carvers, basket weavers, butterfly mounters and apricot pit carvers display and sell their work at one or all of the shops: at the Thompson Center in downtown Chicago, at the Southern Illinois Artisan Shop and Visitors Center at Rend Lake and at the newly renovated Illinois State Museum's gift shop in Springfield.

Gantner expects business to pick up due to the growing popularity of stores that sell original arts and crafts that once were featured only in museum stores.

Artisans are selected for the program, which operates under the auspices of the state museum, by a rotating three-member jury during two annual sessions. There is no limit to the number of artists these juries can accept, Gantner says. "We only want them to look at the quality of the pieces. We don't worry about how to fit everything into the shops until after the selection is over."

Artisans' names remain unknown while their pieces are considered by jury members, who are educators, retailers or artisans. Jurors are selected from across the state, and are never called twice. So an artisan whose work was not chosen one session may resubmit slides of their pieces during another.

The result is an eclectic display of striking, elaborate and often painstakingly constructed art that usually has an Illinois bent. Vorreyer's pieces, for example, often use old iron railroad ties and nails — a nod to the heavy influence railroads have had on Illinois' history, Gantner says. Meanwhile, the work of quilters and lacemakers reflects the long tradition of these crafts among generations of Illinois women.

The number of pieces on display by each artisan varies. There might be 25 pieces of jewelry made by one person and just one sculpture made by another.

Prices are set through a simple formula: The shops double what the artisan wants to make, then keep half of the proceeds. The state's proceeds go back into the program to pay staff and cover overhead and the cost of public education. Still, the state appropriated $293,000 this year to make up the difference. And the shops aren't seen as money-makers in the long run. For some people, says Gantner, that's a bone of contention.

"There have been some accusations that the state shouldn't be in this type of program," she says. "Our main defense is that this is a time when dollars are difficult to find for promoting arts and artisan crafts, and we're promoting a livelihood for 1,400, as well as educating the public."

The Artisan Program helps make Illinois a leader in arts promotion, says Laura Loyacono, a program manager for arts, tourism and cultural resources at the Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures.

"It's really a unique program, and it's probably going to be the type of thing looked at by other states in the future as public and private museums try to be creative in finding funding," says Loyacono, who has written a book for legislators throughout the country about cuts in arts funding. "People are talking about everything from earmarking a certain tax for arts funding to selling off museum assets," she says. "The public Denver Art Museum has raised a lot of money by selling off some of their assets that visitors never get to see, but it's been very controversial. Illinois in a lot of ways is a model for support of the arts. No doubt as endowments dim, state governments will have to find ways to make up for the losses. Programs like the artisan shops could be one way to do that." For visitors and buyers, the shops are a place to learn about crafts that have sustained and brought beauty to the state's households for centuries. For the artisans themselves, they are a way to gain exposure, make money and — perhaps more important — find appreciation. "With most galleries that I'm involved with it's a for-profit situation. They're interested in selling your work; they're not interested in promoting the artist himself," says Jonathan Huth, a sculptor and carver who worked for

Hand-cut crystal is the specialty of artisan Kurt Strobach, who lives — appropriately — in Crystal Lake.

16 / December 1996 Illinois Issues

Baskets are among the most popular crafts sold at the Illinois artisan shops. These baskets by various artists are shown at the program's Rend Lake shop.

decades as a designer in the corporate world before pursuing a living as an independent artist.

"Those galleries treat the artists as a necessary evil; we produce the goods they need to sell. With the state artisans program, they just plain like us," he says. "Lots of artists are very creative; they're not so good at meeting deadlines, which is why a lot of times they're just off on their own. This program recognizes that. There's no pressure to produce. They're just as interested in promoting the artistry itself."

Huth, for instance, has given demonstrations of his crafts for audiences organized by the program. Through such interactive approaches, people learn about art on an individual basis, he says.

"I have a different kind of product. It's not mass-produced. You don't see it everywhere. This exposes people to what I do when they otherwise might not see things like this."

Invariably, the artisans who participate in the state's program have varied backgrounds and experiences, Gantner says. One couple lives in a forest cabin near Charleston, growing and harvesting a large garden of gourds, which they carve and use in pottery their "goods from the woods." Another artist, from Peoria, collects pieces of wood, then carves and polishes them into animal figures. Another Peorian collects butterflies, then labels and "floats" them in lucite containers.

Bill Barron of Crete, meanwhile, must partially create his own medium for his bronze castings of sundials and figurines.

The 71-year-old retiree was a longtime sales manager for a foundry company in Wisconsin. He had trained in metallurgical engineering, and tried to spend a great deal of time in the foundry's shop learning how to work with the metal, though his job didn't require hands-on metalworking.

Barron says he never thought of himself as artistic, but several years ago he let his son Tom — a full-time studio potter at the time — talk him into creating some metal handles and jar poles for his pottery.

"Then Tom nagged me into making full pieces myself using foundry metal," Barron says. "And before I knew it, he had gone back to teaching art in the public schools full-time and I was making cast bronze pieces full-time." Barron's background as an Air Force navigator 50 years ago had given him the celestial knowledge needed to make his sundials geometrically accurate.

Tom was his dad's entree into the artisans program, too. About six years ago, an artist friend told Tom about the state-run shops and asked if he'd be interested in showing his pottery. Tom said he was getting out of the business, but recommended his father's metal pieces for consideration.

Now Barron uses his son's three-car garage as a studio. And he needs the space. To make his bronze creations, he needs sand blasters, a melting furnace, a baking furnace, a kiln and plenty of other equipment.

Barron buys his bronze from a small foundry in nearby Chicago Heights, one of the few outlets he has found, he says, that will sell him the small quantities he needs — 50 to 100 pounds at a time.

Starting with a pattern, as he always does, it takes Barron about three weeks to finish a piece. It takes a week to form a sculpture's mold, which he does by dipping a cast into ceramic sand over and over until it's heavy enough to hold metal. The cast must dry overnight after each dip. Then he fires up his furnace to about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It takes a few days to heat up and then a day and a half to cool down.

"There aren't many people who do this kind of work because a lot of people are afraid of working with molten metal. You have to respect the medium, the artists might say. You have to devote yourself, and make sure you have the proper equipment and mechanical know-how.

"It's not the kind of things you can take a book out of the library and teach yourself. And you can't casually do this on a rainy afternoon. But if you enjoy doing it, like I do, then it's not work."

It's this type of commitment that makes Illinois' Artisan Program so valuable, says Gantner. Dedicated artisans can share rare knowledge and skills with the public.

"One reason Illinois crafts have caught on as they have is that they were always here," she says. "They're a part of our history. It's a point of pride for the state and the artists."

Illinois Issues December 1996 / 17