Terry Pfliger is gone from Southwestern Michigan College, but far from forgotten.

Seven colleagues turned the faculty exhibit in the Art Gallery, 108 Lyons, until Nov. 10 into a tribute to the art professor emeritus who died June 9 at 68.

“Besides, it is always the others who die” blends work borrowed from private collections with original pieces he inspired.

Ten works are on permanent display in Fred L. Mathews Library.

A reception Oct. 19 combined an encore performance by bagpiper Fred Rogers with a mash-up of American and Canadian national anthems sung a cappella by Director of Choral Activities David Carew.

Rogers retraced his fall 2013 route to “Canada, eh?” a gallery show Pfliger organized. From 1973-95 Pfliger led the art department at St. Lawrence College in Kingston, Ontario.

“Terry was a very successful and respected artist in Canada,” said Professor Emeritus David Baker.

A mischievous man who took humor seriously, the only child in 1999 introduced SMC to his fake foundation, the Pfliger Foundation for the Arts, run by invented siblings, twin brother David and younger sister Marlene, who awarded students with toasters.

“The foundation was a way to say I really liked a piece of work,” he said in 2010.

“Many pieces are whimsical historical fiction, taking real events and altering them to toy with the viewer by almost being believable,” Baker said. “Putting people on in a gentle way was his great delight.”

Shannon Eakins’ “Flaneur/Floater,” ceramic seals on air mattresses, represent a departure.

“I usually don’t work in ceramics — or seals,” she said. “One summer I decided to make life-size seals. This started in Las Vegas, but I built them mostly in Tennessee at a friend’s kiln. I couldn’t explain why I made them. They are a perfect tribute to Terry’s ‘go-for-it’ spirit, which carved a path for me here as a faculty member. I appreciate him for that.”

Sherrie Styx’s ceramic installation, “Breakfast,” sets the table for her favorite meal with bacon, eggs, tangled-tine forks, a goldfish bowl, surrealist Salvador Dali’s 1931 The Persistence of Memory (a melting pocket watch) and, of course, a toaster, plus an empty chair “because his spot can never be filled. I took my core art classes from Terry, then went to Western Michigan University. I heard a lot of his great stories.”

“Terry hung out at the library and knew the librarian,” Styx said. “He was a trickster who liked to mess with people. She had goldfish in a beautiful aquarium. He liked to leave her ‘gifts’ she didn’t know where they came from. I got the toaster this summer in St. Joseph at Antiques on the Bluff. It is the same style we had as a kid. Ours caught fire.”

Photographer Dennis Hafer, whose digital print mounted on aluminum recalls Andy Warhol, “didn’t know Terry well, but I was taken by his personality. He was always happy and full of joy.”

Bill Rothwell simulated birds’ role in creating “The First Evidence of a Stained Glass Window” and explained about the hat rack, “Terry bought Goodwill hats, left them on hooks at restaurants, then went back to see how long they lasted.”

When Visual and Performing Arts Chairman Marc Dombrosky joined SMC in 2010, he and Mr. Pfliger shared an office.

Dombrosky contributed a cherry wood humidor with hygrometer because he enjoyed cigars; an unprimed canvas as a nod to assisting Robert Rauschenberg; and a hunting call found near Brush Lake, dangling from a metal hanger that possibly belonged to Robert Smithson, recovered from Spiral Jetty, Utah, in March 2007.

Baker has been rereading Steven Pressfield’s 2002 book, The War of Art.

“He talks about people knowing their purpose,” Baker said. “The shadow side is things put in your way. They might be internal constructs: ‘I’m not smart enough,’ ‘I’m not talented enough.’ We have to kill resistance to do work we’re supposed to. If Terry Pfliger ever had a morning he didn’t defeat resistance I never saw it.

“Ironically, the man who chose visual art had terrible vision. When he came home from college and announced to his incredulous father he was going to teach, he said, ‘You have had a severe stutter your entire life.’ Terry went to his first class and never stuttered again because it was his destiny. He was so engaged in making art he was afraid of retiring to his studio and never coming out.”

Shortly before he died, Pfliger presented Baker, whose resistance is worrying, with a fortune cookie-sized slip: “Worry is a refuge from doing something.”

“The man taught 45 years and I got the best message,” said Baker, whose “To and  Fro” guest book with a Mustang cover decorated inside with 1970 maps will be given to Pfliger’s family.

Southwestern Michigan College is a public, residential and commuter, community college, founded in 1964. The college averages in the top 10 percent nationally for student academic success based upon the National Community College Benchmark Project. Southwestern Michigan College strives to be the college of first choice, to provide the programs and services to meet the needs of students, and to serve our community. The college is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools and is a member of the American Association of Community Colleges.