Painter Callihan's impressionist work tranquil, inspired by Mich. landscapes

EAST LANSING — At the Saper Galleries exhibition "Michigan Impressions: Oil Paintings by Michael Callihan" opening Sunday, Nov. 4, the artist portrays scenes based on places Callihan remembers from his Michigan experiences.

The public is invited to meet the Rockford, Michigan artist at the opening reception and unveiling of 30 new paintings from 1 to 5 p.m. Nov. 4 at Saper Galleries, 433 Albert Avenue in downtown East Lansing. The exhibition will continue through December.

Callihan paints pastoral settings "because the paintings that I'm doing are in my heart." The work reflects his ideal of "living in harmony, without stress; calm, relaxed, and observing nature."

Callihan studied at the Kendall School of Design in Grand Rapids, graduating with a fine arts degree in 1985. After Kendall, he earned a master of fine arts degree from Parsons School of Design in New York.

Callihan cultivates a lifelong love of nature, tending to vegetables and flowers on an acre overlooking Rockford's Rogue River dam.

Gallery owner, Roy Saper, receives about 500 requests a year from artists who wish to display their art in his downtown East Lansing location.

"Four years ago, I was struck with the sensitivity of imagery and the clear understanding of the medium that came through in each of Mike Callihan's Impressionistic landscapes," Saper noted. "And that is why I knew they would be right for Saper Galleries and for those who enjoy seeing examples of such well-executed art by a superb Michigan artist."

"Michigan Impressions: Oil Paintings by Michael Callihan" is the major Saper Galleries exhibition for 2007 and opens Sunday, Nov. 4 from 1-5 p.m. at Saper Galleries, 433 Albert Ave. in Downtown East Lansing.

Through December, the gallery's display of Callihan landscapes will be open to the public Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. The first four Sundays in December the gallery will open from 1-4 p.m. Images of Callihan's paintings and biographical information on the artist may be viewed on-line at www.sapergalleries.com.

Take 5 with Roy Saper of Saper Galleries

Roy Saper took an usual path to becoming an art dealer.

He became an economist.

Saper, who started his Saper Galleries business in his home in 1978, is a former economic forecaster for the state.

These days, however, he's a force in the local economics of art. He travels the globe looking for the right piece for his clients, which range from individuals to businesses to governments.

Saper's been collecting art since he was age 14 or 15. The art he sells ranges from $10 posters to pieces that cost thousands.

"We serve the population that has the following common characteristics: they have walls," Saper said.

Saper moved his art acquisition business in 1986 from his home into a building he designed. It cost three times the price of his home for Saper Galleries' property, but Saper said the risk has been worth it.

"When you want to do something you just have to jump in and do it," he said.

The gallery most recently put on a show featuring works of Pablo Picasso.

Why did you choose East Lansing for your business?

My home was on Bailey Street, which is only a couple blocks from where we are now. I don't do things like anybody else. Some businesses would go into the mall or would want to be on Grand River for exposure. None of that is me. I wanted to be close to home.

What keeps you there given East Lansing's history of problems, whether you call them melees or fracases or riots?

It's frustrating to go outside with your staff and plant many flats of flowers, come inside to get something and by the time you go out have them already pulled out. But you can't let that slow you down. My belief is what we provide the area far exceeds the occasional inconvenience of having to replace landscaping and replace windows."

You own nearly all the art in your gallery, right?

Pretty much everything in the gallery here I purchased with the same checkbook I use to buy things from other merchants in town. I put my money where my mouth is. Just like the Picasso collection: I brought in a large number of works of art. I spent between $100 and $500 per person for everyone who walked through the door to see that exhibition.

How do you identify artworks for a business as opposed to individuals?

We visit the firm to learn a little bit more about it - the type of population it serves, a sense of who works there and where they come - and then develop an understanding of what the image is they want to serve. That allows us to narrowly focus the type of imagery that's right. When we provide art to a credit union or bank ... we want high-quality art, but not so high that people think the bank is spending too much on art.

Who's your favorite artist?

My two little boys, Adam and Jay, are my favorite artists. I have their works displayed in my office and my home. Any parent who has a child has an obligation and responsibility to hang your children's works of art up.

Published May 31, 2006

Picasso exhibit impresses

Christian Czerwinski | NOISE

The compliments have been overwhelming.

But what would one expect from a Pablo Picasso exhibit?

Roy Saper, owner of Saper Galleries in East Lansing, started his exhibit dubbed "Picasso: Original Etchings and Ceramics," which includes graphics and ceramics from the artist, in May. Of the 60 featured works, he's sold about 15, but he plans to bring in about 20 more to replenish the exhibit.

So far, he's been impressed with the response. His guest book has been signed by visitors from Greece (yes, the country), Georgia, Pennsylvania, Florida, Illinois and South Dakota and "amazing," "beautiful," "lovely" and "exquisite" are just a few of the adjectives used to describe the collection.

Throughout the exhibit, the gallery showcases biographies of Picasso's life, from his early years to the women he was involved with.

"Picasso just works and what makes it exciting is that this show is just more than artwork. "We've told the story of Picasso and what was going on during his days in Europe and America. As you start in the front and walk around you'll walk away with a phenomenal amount of knowledge. You'll come back with a story and you'll be conversant on Picasso far more than the general population," Saper, 54, said.

"Unlike the Museum of Modern Art, you won't have to pay $20 either."

Arguably the most famous artist of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso created more than 20,000 works of art during his lifetime, ranging from the first cubist paintings to simple line drawings, sculptures and ceramics. He created more than 500 etchings in his final years and made about 2,000 graphic images.

Many of the etchings in Saper's show are from a set of 100 images created between 1933 and 1937. Picasso examines the relationship between artist and model in the works along with his own relationships with women.

Before the exhibition closes on July 2, Saper said the gallery will have shown more than 100 original Picassos ranging in price from $1,200 to $75,000.

"I wanted to keep them all in a relatively narrow price range. One Picasso sold for $104 million two years ago. Earlier, on May 3, one sold for $92 million," he said.

"You can get a Picasso for a few thousand and the reason is that he was so prolific. Although he's the most famous and recognized artist ever, his works are out there."

Authentic Picasso at Saper Galleries
Lansing State Journal, May 4, 2006

Pablo Picasso is recognised as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. For the next two months, Saper Galleries in East Lansing will exhibit original graphics and ceramics by the legendary artist.

Gallery owner Roy Saper has a love for art which is evident throughout his gallery and collections.

“The gallery was created to make available original works of art to collectors and interested people who would otherwise have to travel to locate them.”

Saper bought his first Picasso piece as a teenager, and has now accumulated enough for an exhibition.

“I like shows that are noteworthy. After having Picassos from my earliest purchases, I decided that the time was right to display what I had due to availability, access and the breadth of imagery I could find.

The Picassos are more affordable now than they will be in the future so the timing seemed right.”

There are many highlights to the show, including a medley of etchings from the “Suite Vollard,” a series of 100 etchings created between 1933 and 1937 for French art dealer and publisher, Ambroise Vollard.

These etchings are of the same caliber as ones that can be enjoyed today in prestigious museums such as the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, and New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Surprisingly, the most rewarding aspect of the art business is the service of “providing works of art and framing services that make [peoples] lives better,” Saper said. “Every thank you card or letter, and positive response we receive from our gallery clients and visitors is the reason I choose to continue providing the services of Saper Galleries.”

Saper said he hopes that people will walk away from the exhibit, with a conversant understanding of Picasso's life and artwork.


"When we have an understanding of what an artist is doing - whether it be a painter, a poet or a dancer," Saper said. "Then we can feel better about our judgment of the work because our criticism is informed."

One of the Picasso pieces at Saper Galleries

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Tuesday, 02 May 2006

The Picasso etchings have arrived and are leaning against the walls of Saper Galleries. Owner Roy Saper is giving an exclusive tour, going from print to print on hands and knees. His wonder at the beauty, skill and grace of the works is sincere, exuberant and infectious. One thing is for certain: when Saper says, “Wanna come up and see my etchings?” it’s not a pickup line, it’s a privilege.

Saper Galleries’  “Picasso: Original Graphics and Ceramics” includes over 60 etchings, lithographs and ceramics, as well as photographs of the artist at work and play.

Saper is such a perfectionist that when a Picasso etching arrives at his gallery that’s not matted and framed to his standards, it causes a great ethical battle in his head.

“There are some frames here that I wouldn’t put on my wall, and I have to figure out what to do,” he comments. “But some of these might have been framed 50 years ago by Picasso’s daughter or granddaughter.”  What to do, what to do?  Should Saper potentially alter the history of a piece and reframe it to his exacting standards, or hang it as is?  It’s issues like these that keep him up late at night.

Serving art: Pablo Picasso created thousands of ceramics up to his death in 1973, treating plates, jugs, vases, and other vessels as a form of canvas. This plate was created in1953 at Madoura Pottery in Vallauris, a small town in south France. (Courtesy Saper Gallery)

Yet even when sleep-deprived, Saper has the energy level of someone half his age. He talks a mile a minute, sharing every tidbit of history of each piece in the show, bouncing around the gallery as if it were a giant Moonwalk.

The idea to do an exhibit of Picasso etchings had been rolling around Saper’s frenetic brain for years, since he purchased his first Picasso reproductions almost 40 years ago. A recent visit to a Picasso exhibit in London sealed the deal. Finding the exhibit disjointed and disappointing, Saper decided that he could do a better job at presenting Picasso’s works.

The bulk of the works come from a series of 100 etchings Picasso created for French art dealer Ambroise Vollard between 1933 and 1937. At first glance, those who are acquainted with Picasso only through the paintings of his Blue, Rose or Cubist periods may find these etchings quite simplistic. But closer inspection reveals the genius it takes to create these seemingly simple pieces.

The works tell a Pygmalion-esque tale of the artist’s relationships to his models, while revealing the artist’s deepest thoughts on himself, his relationships, and his mortality. The etchings meld Greco-Roman classicism with the clean lines of 1930s graphic design.

Symbols like seemingly innocuous vases of flowers are scattered throughout the series. Picasso connoisseurs are capable of discussing these details for hours. For some, the flowers track the shifting shape of love, changing in intensity and mood as the stem lengths and the amount of droop changes from piece to piece. In one of the later pieces, the flowers are moved from the windowsill to the floor, replaced by a potted plant. The shift could symbolize a more permanent, rooted love, or the flower of youth being replaced by a less showy yet mature rooted plant.

The subtext to these etchings is an affair Picasso had with his model and secret mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter, whom he met in 1927 when she was 17 years old.

The exhibit will also feature several pieces of ceramics, which strike the viewer as more whimsical than many of Picasso’s other works. One piece in particular, “Hen Subject, 1954”, in Dutch blue and white, looks like something one might find in an antique store in West Michigan. “Still Life, 1953” is an easily recognizable Picasso-style still life rendered on the surface of a serving platter.

To help audiences appreciate and understand Picasso, Saper will add descriptive, informational text to accompany each piece. “It’ll be kind of like Picasso 101,” he says.

Saper has organized large exhibits from well-known artists such as Norman Rockwell, Peter Max and Pissarro. After 28 years in business in East Lansing, Saper could rest on his laurels and still pay the rent. “There’s no reason to do this other than the mountain is there and I’ve got climbing boots,” he says.

‘Ioan Nemtoi: Hand-blown Glass’

By LAWRENCE COSENTINO         Lansing City Pulse     November 9, 2005

It seems absurd to call the blazing globs of glass blown by Romanian master Ioann Nemtoi “vases” and “pitchers,” unless you’ve got mutant poppies from Jupiter or thrice-cursed dragon blood to put inside them.

With Nemtoi, whose glass art is now on display at Saper Galleries in East Lansing, form overwhelms function on the audacious scale of a Frank Gehry building or the mouth of Marilyn Monroe.

Gallery owner Roy Saper says he saw Nemtoi’s work at a New York exposition three years ago, where it stopped him in his tracks. “What distinguishes Nemtoi from other glass blowers is his ability to control the medium in such a large size,” he says.

“Other glass blowers make things you can put in your pocket, but this stuff would have to go in the back seat or the trunk of the car.”

The boldest pieces catch the eye first: a 2-foot-tall, electric-indigo vase with an inky black spiral inscribed in front; glowing yellow and red bowls with curled sides like giant cupcakes; a fearsome pitcher with dinosaur spikes and a curling tendril based on the fleshy “fishing” appendage of the deep-sea anglerfish.

Alongside this wild stuff sit quieter pieces that convey a more grounded energy. “Forest Green Vase” may be the masterpiece of the whole lot. It’s a classic near-sphere, dappled and flecked with deeply evocative earth tones that seem to implode at the vase’s tiny lip and balloon out generously at the equator.

Even the biggest pieces have an elegance of form and fineness of finish that give no hint of the effort required to make them. Some of these pieces weigh 20 or 30 pounds, and weighed no less when they were molten blobs to be wrangled and massaged into shape at the end of a long, heavy metal rod. Imagine holding a 5-foot pole with a double-size bowling ball on one end, trying to melt it like a marshmallow over a fire, and you get some idea of the physical effort — but not the subtle art — involved.

“He puts the end of the rod into a furnace,” Saper says. Inside is a white hot mass of molten glass. “It’s in a vitreous state — almost a slurry, like a pancake mix.”

“He moves the rod around until he gets the quantity he wants. Then he turns it, using only gravity, and he goes on doing a dance with that rod in the middle of the air. He brings it to his mouth and gives it a puff of air.”

All the while, Nemtoi has to keep turning the piece, re-heating and rotating it selectively so it doesn’t sag or fall. He adds new colors and textures by returning the piece to the fire, dipping it into a different glob of glass, and going through the process all over again.

Nemtoi’s favorite colors are Chinese-lantern reds and yellows, often accented by bold black borders. Gold leaf feathers the finish on some pieces, helping the eyeballs gain some extra purchase on the slippery surface of the glass. One vase, a tribute to Vincent Van Gogh,  is a tour de force, squashing all the cornfields and starry nights of Van Gogh’s fevered vision into a self-contained universe of Vincent-ness. “He controls the finishes so well,” Saper says. Although most of the pieces are shiny and bead-like, several have matte finishes that interact with the light in the room on completely different terms than the reflective pieces. (Narcissists may want to skip the matte ones.)

By Kathleen Lavey
Lansing State Journal               Published July 20, 2005

(Saper Galleries) Cloudy day: Tunis Ponsen, who was born in the Netherlands but lived in Michigan and Illinois, was inspired by the Midwest landscapes around him.

View the exhibit in person or online • More than 100 paintings by Tunis Ponsen are on display at Saper Galleries, 433 Albert Ave. in East Lansing, through July; the show is likely to be extended through Aug. 13 to coincide with the Great Lakes Folk Festival in East Lansing. • Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursdays. • The exhibition includes a mix of watercolors and oil paintings. • Learn more by checking the gallery's Web site at www.sapergalleries.com or calling 351-0815. Tunis trivia • In 1928, Tunis Ponsen won an $800 award to travel to Europe and paint. A runner-up in the competition: "American Gothic" painter Grant Wood. • Ponsen's paintings have graced the walls of the Michigan governor's residence during both the John Engler and Jennifer Granholm administrations. • Four of his paintings are on loan from Saper Galleries to the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. • Fiction writer Stuart Dybek, who grew up in Chicago and teaches creative writing at Western Michigan University, asks his publishers to use Ponsen paintings on the covers of his books. • Ponsen is listed alongside other Michigan notables such as historian Bruce Catton and astronaut James McDivitt in a new social studies text that focuses on Michigan.

Roy Saper stepped back from the oil painting of a gnarled tree against a mostly gray sky.

The clouds reveal just a hint of blue sky.

"See?" Saper said. "He painted things as he saw them. The sky is gray. But there's a little blue. There's room for hope."

The painting is one of 100 by Dutch-born American impressionist Tunis Ponsen, on display through the end of the month at Saper Galleries in East Lansing. Ponsen, known for portraits and, especially, landscapes, lived in west Michigan and Chicago, where he taught at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Ponsen's portraits are arresting, from that of an elderly Civil War veteran to an elegant woman. His landscapes are evocative, depicting scenes such as Michigan's rolling farmland, the seaside village of Gaspe, Quebec, and Chicago's industrial heart.

But his life story is just as arresting as the paintings he created. Ponsen's legacy of nearly 1,000 paintings was kept in his niece's basement for decades after his death in 1968, emerging through a series of twists and turns before winding up at Saper Galleries.

Painting his future

The story starts in 1891 in the Netherlands, where Ponsen was born. He emigrated to America in 1914.

Like many Dutch settlers, he wound up in Muskegon, where he worked as an interior decorator and house painter. After raising the money to bring his childhood sweetheart to America, he found she had fallen in love with another man during the Atlantic crossing. He never married.

Ponsen, who experimented with art in his teens, studied at the Art Institute of Chicago for six months in 1917, then applied for American citizenship and enlisted in the military to fight during World War I.

After the war, he returned to Muskegon as a professional decorator and an amateur painter. He showed some of his work at a Muskegon gallery to generally good reviews. In 1924, he enrolled in the Art Institute of Chicago full time, completing the three-year program in about 18 months.

Ponsen achieved good reviews and some commercial success, so he stayed in Chicago, teaching at the Art Institute and in his own studio. He visited Michigan often to see his sister, Arnolda Schogt, her husband and their daughter, Angenita, who lived on a fruit farm near Benton Harbor.

The fields and trees on the farm became favorite subjects for Ponsen, who is said to have created as many as a dozen watercolors in a single day.

Bountiful inheritance

After Ponsen's death in 1968, his niece Angenita Morris inherited his estate. When she and her husband went to Chicago to close out his estate, they found a trove of 1,000 works in oil and watercolors.

They hung many on the walls of their home near Benton Harbor and stored the rest on homemade racks in the basement. The paintings stayed there until 1990, when the Morrises called an insurance appraiser to help them put a value on the collection in case of loss.

He did that, but he also encouraged the couple to share the paintings.

Between 1994 and 1996, they allowed 51 of the paintings to be used in an exhibit shown at six museums, including Michigan State University's Kresge Art Gallery. Saper became interested in the paintings and bought a few.

After Morris died in a car accident, her daughter agreed to have Saper dispose of Ponsen's entire estate, including the paintings, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings and tools.

Saper recalls the first time he went to the Morris home to look at the paintings, taking his wife and two young sons along.

"All we did all day long was just look at paintings," he said. "We just went through those racks."

Regional impressions

Judith Hayner, executive director of the Muskegon Museum of Art, described Ponsen's paintings as a good example of American impressionism and called him a significant regional artist.

"Whether or not he has, or will, break through to more of a national or international circle has yet to be determined," she said. But she admitted she has a Ponsen East Coast scene hanging on the wall in her museum office.

"It's quite beautiful," she said. "It's a great painting."

Saper said Ponsen's appeal is in his honesty.

"People feel like they have a connection with the artist," he said, standing in front of one of the Michigan landscapes. "It's not buying a pretty picture, it's not buying something to decorate a wall."

Oil paintings listed on the gallery's Web site are priced at $3,000 to $13,000; watercolors are in a lower range.

The paintings, of course, are the heart of the show. But Saper has gathered letters, photos and objects from Ponsen's life that help visitors make a connection with the artist.

For example, a linoleum-cut print made by Ponsen is accompanied not only by the block he used to print it but by the tools he used to carve the block and the ink he used to make prints. Letters - including a handwritten resume - and photos give glimpses into the artist's life and subject matter.

The artist's palette is on display, with a gray mountain range of dried paint at its edge topped by dabs of unmixed red, yellow, blue and white.

"I wanted to bring together not only his paintings, but the personal elements of his life," Saper said.

Saper has spent so much time with Ponsen's work that he feels a direct connection to the artist. He doesn't say he sold a painting but rather, "I had to let that one go" to a new owner.

"He's kind of like an uncle," said Saper, who has visited Ponsen's former home and studio in Chicago, as well as many of the sites he painted. "I probably know more about Tunis Ponsen than his family members."

Contact Kathleen Lavey at 517-377-1251 or klavey@lsj.com.

A room with a hundred windows

The exhibit is further broadened and deepened by a large stock of the artist’s personal effects, including Ponsen’s battered paint box and paints, a handful of linoleum-block prints (both prints and blocks), original exhibit catalogs and actual objects that appeared in his paintings (including a book about Ponsen’s idol Vincent Van Gogh, conspicuously left on the floor in a splendid view of the artist’s Chicago digs).

The paintings and the memorabilia reveal Ponsen as a visual poet of sanity, moderation, diligence and self-effacement. "I have no particular theories," he told a reporter in 1932. "I just paint the thing the way I see it."

Yet the paintings also show that Ponsen was no folksy, pandering illustrator, either. During his lifetime, he was even called a "modernist" now and then, owing to his lack of interest in fine detail, bold brushstrokes and compositional restlessness. Ponsen’s innovations, however, were never systematic, but always instead integral to the image at hand. It’s hard to find a canvas of his that doesn’t release an unexpected spore of newness — the blazing red undersides of geranium leaves, odd brackets of bananas in a still life, a strangely blank side of a building. Later in life, Ponsen even dabbled in abstraction (it was the ‘60s, after all), as evidenced by two of the Saper paintings: a giant, textured white blob and a flat array of varied shapes imprisoned by a row of realistically painted white birches.

Still, observation, not experimentation, was Ponsen’s guiding light. At the Saper exhibit, there are interiors and exteriors, nature scenes and industrial wastelands, human subjects of all ages and body types.

Gnarled trees, elegant ladies, skyscrapers, piles of books, demolished buildings, meadows, rocky beaches, sandy beaches, farms, fields, streets, flowers — all of these got Ponsen’s loving and careful attention.

Ponsen’s quiet mastery shows that just looking out the window, if done properly, is enough excitement for a lifetime. In fact, many of his best paintings literally look past the casement of his studio window, over a burning cigarette or a half-finished book, into a street charged with potential color and movement.

Outside, there might be a darting figure in the rain, a tree caught in one of its myriad moods or merely the white surface of the street itself, doing its job merely by reflecting light.

By concentrating so much attention on his subject rather than his own psyche, Ponsen becomes less a creator than a human vantage point, a well-situated and stimulating room — in the case of the Saper exhibit, a room with 100 windows.

Born in the Netherlands in 1891, Ponsen settled in Muskegon in 1914, where he began to exhibit at the Hackley Art Gallery (now the Muskegon Museum of Art). Many of the canvases at Saper will be familiar to anyone who has traveled through West Michigan. There are unruly old orchards, rolling hills, farmhouses overgrown with brambles and lilacs, sand dunes crawling with spidery, stunted trees.

Within a few years of his emigration to the United States, Ponsen inevitably found his way to Chicago. In 1925, he graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago, precociously finishing a three-year Master of Fine Arts program in 18 months.

With its industrial hellfires, tumbledown neighborhoods and graceful skyscrapers, Chicago vastly broadened Ponsen’s visual world. Furthermore, the city’s semi-insulation from the trendy coasts suited Ponsen’s old-world training and methodical eye. Though his career spanned some turbulent decades in art history, Ponsen never associated himself with a stylistic movement.

The artist’s heyday lasted from the ‘20s through the ‘40s, when his work was exhibited 34 times at various museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Toledo Art Museum. For most of his life, he supported himself by selling his paintings and teaching.

Ponsen lived alone throughout it all. Just after arriving in Muskegon, he wrote back to the Netherlands, asking his girlfriend to join him, but she succumbed to a shipboard romance on the way across the Atlantic. Ponsen never married. Some have found in his work a melancholy directly traceable to this misfortune; it’s just as logical to suppose that in his many interior paintings, the viewer serves as a ghostly roommate, politely removed in space and time.

While warmly received by many critics during his lifetime, Ponsen was handicapped by his low-key, unsensational approach and Midwestern location. At the time of his death in 1968, few art lovers could name any Chicago painters at all, let alone Ponsen.

In 1968, Ponsen’s niece Angenita and her husband inherited the artist’s considerable legacy. Over a period of several months, they drove more than 1,000 paintings, carload by carload, to their home in Benton Harbor, Mich. There, the loving niece kept the paintings in climate-controlled conditions. In 1990, a homeowner’s insurance appraiser saw the cache and appreciated its significance. The result was the mid-’90s "Lost Paintings" tour, which hit seven Michigan cities and sparked a visit by Roy Saper to Angenita’s Benton Harbor home.

Saper ended up as custodian of the Ponsen legacy; he’s sold some 500 paintings in the last 10 years, about 300 of them to Lansing-area art lovers.

He is delighted to sit on so rich a mountain, and with good reason. The timing couldn’t be better for a Ponsen revival. Not only is the artist a generation gone (an unfortunate bonus in the arts world), the world seems quite ready to take bold yet figurative art like Ponsen’s to its bosom again. Flashy decadence is out; rock-solid integrity is in.

One painting in the exhibit, a portrait of a confident, seated woman in a red dress, appears in the gallery on "un-loan" from a highly placed party Saper declined to identify, except that she’s "the governor of a certain Midwestern state bounded almost entirely by the Great Lakes."

"It’s their favorite painting," Saper said with a grin.

The variety of the Saper exhibit goes beyond subject matter. Some paintings appear in multiple versions — loose water colors and taut oils, finished works and preliminary studies.

For example, a view of Lake Michigan, with the skyline of Chicago in the distance, will be seen in two versions — a watercolor done on site and an oil painting made in the studio.

Children’s puzzle books are full of such "How are these two pictures different?" games. Here, however, the differences between Ponsen’s water color and oil versions aren’t just diverting; they sound out the hidden hinges that link sight to memory. Glancing from water color to oil painting, the viewer exchanges the sunny moments of discovery Ponsen must have experienced on the lake for darker hours of carefully considered composition in the studio. Rocks on the shore lose their lines and erode. The lake’s color deepens and darkens. The sky grows grayer and more ominous. Which version is more "true"? Under that question lie several more, among them: What can a picture hope to capture? How intensely should anything be looked at and thought about before moving on?

Among the finished oils at the Saper exhibit are a large number of looser, brighter water colors, many of them laced with eye-relaxing white space that invites the viewer to fill in the rest of the picture. In one striking picture, a mighty, ancient tree felled by lightning — a recurring Ponsen subject — continues to reach to the sky in death with a thousand curling branches. It’s hard not to think of the many paintings Ponsen left behind, filling the eye many years after his passing, when viewing this scene.

If there is any common theme running through the profusion of Ponsens on exhibit at Saper, it might be the artist’s uncanny skill at blurring seemingly opposite principles — growth and decay, the natural and the man-made, clutter and emptiness, monotony and variety — into a profoundly integrated yet open-ended reality. Again and again, Ponsen finds roughness in smoothness, greyness in color, and vice versa. For example, a railroad embankment on Chicago’s south side — really a big heap of dirt — delights the eye in Ponsen’s painting, revealing florid swirls of color when viewed up close. Conversely, a giant terraced garden, apparently located near the same embankment, almost bores the viewer with its monotonous spiral of greenery.

Ponsen’s portraits, especially his nudes, further show his aversion toward arousing passions that could get in the way of quiet, persistent and rewarding absorption in reality. The most remarkable case in point in the Saper exhibit is a large painting of a reclining, semi-nude man. Eyes closed, hand behind his head, he is seen from a foreshortened, low angle, the position and vantage point recalling many Renaissance paintings depicting Christ on the cross.

But dramatic passion plays are out of place in Ponsen’s world. Here, no particular agony or ecstasy is detectable — only a moment of calm repose in a man’s life. Fully in tune with his surroundings, with just enough self-consciousness to enjoy floating in the world, it’s hard not to think of the nude as a psychic self-portrait. The beatific facial expression and muscular beauty combine to ask the most Ponsen-esque of questions: "Isn’t this enough?"