ARTIST'S STATEMENT. In my
work, I enjoy bringing together various items or characters that mean a lot to
me as a person and as an artist. The
beet head that appears in so many of my pieces is based on a small wooden
figure that I purchased at an import store.
I am very fond of this object and was inspired to draw it for the first
time in early 2005. The figure with the
plant on his shoulder and number seven at his waist represents me, a traveler
through life who searches the southern shore of Lake Michigan for precious
crinoid fossils. The fish, rainbow, sun
and moon, and other assorted items floating in the sky all present aspects of
my personality and varied interests.
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I
hope to tell a story in my pictures, and the story is basically an extended
investigation of who I am and what I discover in the landscape of both my
imagination and the region I call home.
The steel mill one sees in the lower right corner of many of my drawings
serves as a small indicator of the geographical location for my personal and
fanciful scenarios; in a sense, I wish my works to function like a message in a
bottle, where through the drawings I reach across time and space to communicate
to the viewer the way I felt, the things I was thinking about, as I created the
picture.
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I
concentrate primarily on drawing because I like the directness of this
art-making approach. Each pen line I
apply to the paper breathes more life into my chosen subjects, and I enjoy the
thrill of seeing these subjects emerge and proclaim their individual
identities.
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Overall,
my art takes me on a quirky, surreal journey of self-discovery, where pleasant
characters get invented in the process that, through their disarmingly unusual
natures and appearances, encourage viewers to perhaps plumb their own
imaginations and delight in the wonders they may find there.
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Gregg Hertzlieb is the
director/curator of the Brauer Museum of Art at Valparaiso University in
Valparaiso, Indiana. Hertzlieb has a
master’s degree in fine arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
and a master’s degree in education from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
An
exhibiting artist working primarily in watercolor and pen and ink, Hertzlieb
has shown his art in numerous exhibitions.
His work is in both public and private collections.
Hertzlieb
is the editor of the books The Calumet
Region: An American Place (Photographs by Gary Cialdella) (2009), Heeding the Voice of Heaven: Sadao Watanabe
Biblical Stencil Prints (2010), and Domestic
Vision: Twenty-Five Years of the Art of Joel Sheesley (2008), as well as a
contributor to the books The Indiana
Dunes Revealed: The Art of Frank V. Dudley (2006) and American Railroad China: Image and Experience (2008). In addition to performing his duties at the
museum, Hertzlieb teaches Museum Studies, serves as art editor for Valparaiso
University’s journal The Cresset, and
contributes essays on Brauer collection objects to the Valparaiso Poetry Review.
Hertzlieb is a native of Northwest Indiana and lives in Chesterton. His email address is
Gregg.Hertzlieb@valpo.edu.
