DENNOS ART BANNER OF CULVER'S SLEEPING FOX - on the Leelanau Studios Building on M22 at Cherry Bend Road
Image size is 24 feet wide x 18 feet tall
PRESS RELEASE FROM DENNOS ART MUSEUM
Subject:New Art Banners to be installed in Traverse City.
Traverse City: Two new large scale art banners featuring the work of Michigan artists Charles Culver and Douglas Hoagg are scheduled to be installed by Britten Studios on March 2, 2016 (subject to weather) on the walls of the Leelanau Studios building (former Norris School) on NW the corner of Cherry Bend Road and M22.
The two works to be installed Charles Culver’s watercolor Sleeping Fox and Douglas Hoagg’s Untitled pastel are from the collections of the Dennos Museum Center at Northwestern Michigan College.
“We’re thrilled to be a part of the Traverse City Art Banner Project for large scale art that the entire community can enjoy. Leelanau Studios is an idea location,” says John Robert Williams, Photographer and a member of the TC Art Banner Committee.”
“These are the 4th and 5th works from the museum’s collection that have been reproduced and hung with the Banner Project as part of the events related to the celebration of The Dennos’ 25th anniversary in 2016,” says Gene Jenneman, Executive Director of The Dennos, “this effort is designed to draw attention to the Dennos collection and is also part of the lead up to the anticipated construction of permanent collection galleries for The Dennos in 2016, thanks to a major gift from Diana and Richard Milock.
The Traverse City Art Banner project is the brainchild of former NMC Art Department Chair Paul Welch, who along with a committee of artists and art supporters has been seeking empty walls on downtown Traverse City buildings and asking the owners of the buildings to allow them to become outdoor galleries with reproduction banners of art by regional artists; former NMC art students and imagery from the collections of the Dennos Museum Center, which is a collaborative partner with the Banner Project.
The art banners are hung for several months, during which the Committee and Dennos are working to select new images and find additional buildings to become outdoor galleries for the work.
The project is supported by private donors who provide the funds for printing and installation by Britten Studios of the reproduced art works. Anyone wishing to support the project should contact Gene Jenneman at the Dennos Museum Center 231-995-1572.
The installation of the Charles Culver Sleeping Fox and Douglas Hoagg Pastel joins the Yousuf Karsh portrait of Ernest Hemingway and the Katsushika Hokusai Great Wave, along with Run Before the Wind by Madonna Walters, Calvin Boulter’s work entitled A Space Time Continuum, and the work Thunderbird Man by Aboriginal Canadian artist Norval Morrisseau from the collections of the Dennos Museum Center, that are currently hanging on buildings in downtown Traverse City.
Charles Culver (1908 - 1967)
Born in 1908, Culver worked in a commercial art studio in Detroit, while pursuing a career as a fine art artist. He spent summers in Bellaire, Michigan and painted the northern Michigan landscape and animals at the zoo in Traverse City.
“Charles Culver was a true artist,” wrote E. P. Richardson, former head curator of art at the Detroit Institute of Arts, “by this I mean that what he did in art came from within himself. It did not come from a teacher or a school, or a fashion of painting, or from the pages of a magazine. It came from his own way of seeing the world, of which his painting was the disciplined and sensitive expression.”
Culver’s success resulted in a New York City exhibition in 1940 that brought him national recognition for his work. Culver rejected being defined as a “regional” artist, yet much of his subject matter was based in Michigan. “Culver’s paintings record his emotional and aesthetic response to the visible world.” writes Gordon & Elizabeth Orear in an unpublished biography on Culver, “In his philosophy of art, the artist's responsibility is to give beauty to life, to reveal the wondrous variety of nature’s art, and thereby raise the human spirit above the concerns of daily living and of the routines of business that threaten to obscure the mind's sense of wonder.”
In addition to being a painter, Culver was a poet and musician. He died in 1967.
Charles Culver (American, 1908-1967)
Sleeping Fox 1951
Watercolor on paper
From the collection of the Dennos Museum Center