More than 30 faculty, staff and students gathered in Bemidji State University’s Talley Gallery to welcome internationally acclaimed artist Gordon Van Wert and a collection of his stone sculptures.
The gallery, titled “Legends in Stone” features carved representations of Anishinaabe stories and traditions using stone and marble. Sculpture titles include “Remembering Springtime,” “Thunderbird,” “Generations” and “Morning Glory.”
Van Wert grew up in Red Lake, Minnesota, but moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to attend art school. After completing his undergraduate degree, he enlisted in the U.S. Army.
“We I got out of the army, I didn’t what I was going to do. I wasn’t even thinking about my art,” he said.
Though he tried working in various professions, including law enforcement, nothing stuck. After moving to the Twin Cities for a short time, Van Wert moved back to Santa Fe in 1972 to pursue a post-graduate degree in art.
During his second stint in Santa Fe, Van Wert was introduced to air hammers and Dremel drills by a friend who was working at a tombstone factory at the time. An air hammer, also known as an air chisel, is a hand tool used to carve in stone. Similarly, Dremel drills can drill, carve and engraving hard surfaces. These tools would later become instrumental in Van Wert’s art.
“Man, did I get excited. Once I saw what the the air hammers and grinders and Dremel’s could do, I just loved it and started taking off,” he said.
Van Wert had started as a two-dimensional artist, but moved into painting and etching before pursuing sculpture. To demonstrate his growth, “Legends in Stone” also features an high school etching from 1967 and a wooden, hand carved cougar sculpture that he completed in tenth grade.
Additionally, the gallery includes a small-scale rendition of a Van Wert sculpture called “Sun and Wind” that was installed outside Bemidji State’s Bridgeman Hall pergola in 2008. Selected through a call-for-artists, the half-ton limestone and cast glass sculpture represents the first technologies that man utilized, the sun and the wind. Man understood how to use the energy from the sun and wind to create a better living condition for themselves and their community, from growing crops to harnessing the wind for sailing, these original technologies are the bedrock of man’s development.
Van Wert’s art is currently on display throughout the United States including the University of Minnesota Duluth’s Tweed Museum of Art. Select pieces also reside in the homes of celebrities like Robert Redford and Goldie Hawn.
The “Legends in Stone” gallery is open free to the public at Bemidji State through Nov. 30.
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2021-B-036