Buchanan’s Kate Reitz won the $300 Mina Award scholarship and Dowagiac’s Morgan Adams captured President Dr. David Mathews’ Award with a banana watercolor which seems three-dimensional at Southwestern Michigan College’s 2015-16 student art exhibition.

Visual and Performing Arts Chairman Marc Dombrosky dedicated the exhibition to Professor Emeritus Terry Pfliger, who served as juror after retiring last fall.

“The most important part of art you make as a student is the project — not the notion of what it will look like. Two, let mistakes you make guide you. We learn from mistakes,” Pfliger said in a statement Dombrosky read. “Success is overrated. Do not become comfortable. Take a different pathway each time. Flounder. Three, enjoy the process. Four, you will find your own way.”

Professor Emeritus David Baker donned a beret and white glove to salute along with his best French accent to announce in song Jacob Hainer’s Regroupement d’Artistes Award.

“He has given two years of devoted service to this gallery space,” Baker said. “He is so passionate about art and museum work that he has chosen that as his professional career goal” — a Smithsonian curator.

Baker channeled Pfliger to present the whimsical Pfliger Foundation of the Arts Award to Kate Reitz consisting of $49.95 and a toaster.

Reitz this summer studies glass blowing at Saugatuck’s Ox-Bow School of Art, which is affiliated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Adams, who graduates May 7 with all A’s, will attend Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids.

“Terry’s career spanned two blocks,” Baker said. “For 25 years he was professor of art at St. Lawrence College in Kingston, Ontario. He returned to his hometown, Bridgman, and came to work for us for 20 years. He was passionate about art, teaching and the creative process. Terry’s knowledge of art history is encyclopedic. He taught us repeatedly with his teaching and his art that one can deal with extremely serious art and, at the same time, have an extremely serious sense of humor.”

Baker said Pfliger missed the April 28 reception to be at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, which May 5 offers an in-depth look at Rembrandt van Rijn’s 1658 oil, “Portrait of a Man with Arms Akimbo.”

“They’re doing a retrospective exhibition of influential 1970s Canadian artists they’ve brought back together,” Baker said. “He’s not retired to the La-Z-Boy. All three of his children live in Canada. He recently set up a national network of universities and museums that will contribute interactively, kind of like TEDTalk meets blog meets Facetime. He’s worked with Apple of Canada to do all the digital work for that. He has been offered an opportunity to write a doctoral dissertation on the early history of influential Kingston artists who reformed the politics and economics of Canadian art museums. He has more ideas in an afternoon than many artists have in a decade.”

“This event is intentionally built on tradition,” Baker apprised freshmen attending their first show. “This is my 69th. Twenty-five years ago we had an absolutely brilliant student, Mina Pouamehr, arguably the very best student artist I’ve ever seen. She was a beautiful spirit, but 10 days after graduation she was killed in a fiery car crash. Our Best of Show is the Mina Award. Tradition.”

 

Drawing — Kate Reitz, Krista Bryant, Morgan Adams

Watercolor — Kate Reitz

Graphic design — Michael Enders, Michael Parsons, Katey Good, Abigail Gillespie, Chris Young, Sabrina Baird, Morgan Adams, Danielle Curley, Janet Davis, Sarah Wright, Devonte Driver

Photography — Gage Craft, Michael Parsons, Tyler Roberts, Kyra DeLoach, Michael Parsons

Ceramics — Michael Parsons, Ashe Sims, Eli Bliss, Constance Scott

Ceramics Student Choice Award — Mary Martin

Mina Scholarship Award — Kate Reitz

$49.95 + A Toaster Award — Kate Reitz

Regroupement d’Artistes Award — Jacob Hainer

Presidential Award — Morgan Adams