“The Last Supper,” acrylic on linen by Craig Bishop.
Kellogg Community College is hosting an exhibit of nearly two dozen paintings by accomplished regional artist and educator Craig Bishop on campus this month in Battle Creek.
The exhibit, titled “Observations on American Life: Paintings by Craig Bishop,” opened Sept. 25 and will run through Friday, Oct. 20, at the Eleanor R. and Robert A. DeVries Gallery in KCC’s Davidson Visual and Performing Arts Center, on campus at 450 North Ave., Battle Creek.
In his artist’s statement for the exhibit, Bishop says the collection represents periods of interest covering his painting career since 1966, covering topics including the ways different cultures bury their dead; the types of homes people live in; black culture; friends who have died; family history; societal change; and folk and native art.
“Germanic Influence on Men and Women from Dürer to Barbie,” oil on linen by Craig Bishop.
“The early work was a study of color through landscape images,” Bishop says. “Over the years I became more interested in content than the process of painting. I think that for me once an artist, painter, photographer or sculptor gets the hang of the technique, one begins to become more interested in communicating an idea. The idea can be technical as well as a subjective meaning.”
Bishop developed an interest in art as a student at Galesburg-Augusta in the 1950s, and paired an Art minor with his major in Biological Sciences at Western Michigan University when he graduated in 1961. Bishop was key to starting an art program at Gull Lake Community Schools in the 1960s, where he worked as a science teacher, and he’s been actively working in art education ever since. He retired in 1993 after teaching art at Gull Lake for 25 years, and taught art part-time for several years at institutions including KCC and WMU; Bishop still teaches at the Art Center of Battle Creek.
For more information about the exhibit or other arts initiatives at KCC, contact the College’s Arts and Communications office at 269-965-4126.
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