HYBRID: In the classroom and online. A Zoom link will be sent to all one day before class.
This is about art and about history, but it is not art history. Let's be footloose and fancy free, and just follow our feet from one imaginary gallery to another, from one museum to another, to an astonishing building here and a surprising home or factory there. Without any boundaries of time or space, let's enjoy the work of creative people, one by one, asking ourselves how the font of human ingenuity is opened and nourished and fulfilled. The imagined galleries we visit for this class will feature first, the work of 17th century wood carver Enku, who traveled throughout Japan and is said to have created 120,000 carvings of the Buddha. Our second gallery will be that of our guide, Ann Arbor artist and tall man Mike Kapetan, who has made wood carving a focus of his career. Michael R. Kapetan is an artist whose own work is informed by the scientific, the aesthetic, and the spiritual as he creates holy images for churches, synagogues, and temples, plus unique solar sculptures that mark the turning of the seasons. Mike is retired from the University of Michigan’s School of Art. He holds a degree in art history from Harvard University, and a master’s degree in sculpture from the University of Michigan.
