Gallery Displays Michigan Talent, Pride

The State News
Michigan State University
January 14, 2010

By Carter Moulton

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Saper Galleries Earns Top Recognition in

Art Business News Gallery Excellence Awards Program

Greater Lansing Convention and Visitors Bureau
Development and Community News
August  12, 2009

Art Business News, a national business publication serving the fine-art market, recently honored Saper Galleries in East Lansing, Mich., with the 2009 Gallery Excellence Award for Best Gallery Event. The inaugural program—which pays tribute to the nation’s top art galleries across the United States—is judged by a panel of industry experts who distinguish the nation’s top-performing galleries in five art-related categories. “Saper Galleries literally ‘stole the show’ for Best Gallery Event, thanks to their strategic event planning, community outreach and, of course, phenomenal results,” Art Business News Managing Editor Jennifer Dulin Wiley says. The Saper exhibition “The Art of Dr. Seuss” was cited as the top exhibition of all art galleries in 2008 in terms of scholarship, breadth and detail of exhibition, planning and implementation, and community involvement and visitor responsiveness. Saper Galleries will be featured with the four other Gallery Excellence Awards winners in the magazine’s September issue, and each will receive a commemorative award to display the accomplishment in their gallery. “We are so honored to have received the call telling us of our having been selected as the top exhibition gallery for 2008 in this inaugural program,” noted gallery owner Roy C. Saper. “I have always strived to create for our community, gallery visitors and friends the very best exhibitions possible, showing artworks that have never been brought together before and presenting them in a manner that is exciting, informative, and relevant – and totally free to the visitor.” Saper buys the art to form the exhibitions he creates, using the art to present a story of the artist’s life, enlightening the public on the importance and relevance of the artists exhibited. An early exhibition displayed original Norman Rockwell paintings and drawings. Later he displayed the 50 “best” Audubons from the artist’s Birds of America portfolio. The popular Peter Max exhibition was the largest and the Pablo Picasso exhibition received the most international attention, winning Saper Galleries the top gallery of the year award for exhibitions in 2007 as determined by Décor Magazine. The 2008 Dr. Seuss exhibition opened the eyes of more than 20,000 visitors who learned that there is much, much more to Dr. Seuss (author-painter Ted Geisel) and his life than most people knew. Recently Saper appeared with Seuss’s widow, Audrey Geisel for the dedication of a Lorax sculpture in LaJolla, California. The mission of the Gallery Excellence Awards program is to strengthen and invigorate the art industry by recognizing successful retail gallery practices nationwide. The awards give magazine subscribers the opportunity to learn more about effective art-business practices from the nation’s top galleries. According to the U.S. Census Bureau there are 6,328 galleries in the United States.  Art Business News is a respected B2B publication that has been serving the fine-art industry for more than 30 years. The monthly magazine is distributed to readers across the United States, Canada and overseas. Saper Galleries (www.sapergalleries.com) is an internationally respected full service art gallery which represents 150 of the world’s better artists. It was founded by Roy Saper in 1978 in East Lansing, Michigan and serves clients throughout the world providing art of every medium for homes, businesses, public art installations and special commissions.

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Treehugger.com
Photo of Saper Galleries solar panels and part of roof garden
http://www.treehugger.com/galleries/2009/08/treehugger-readers-edible-container-gardens.php?page=5

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Saper Galleries' "Dr. Seuss" Wins National Honor
Towne Courier
Sunday, August 15, 2009

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LansingCityPulse
Wednesday, March 25,2009

LOCAL BUSINESS PROFILE: SAPER GALLERIES

Not your parents´ art: Saper Galleries puts a personal touch on art dealing

by Nick Robinson

Or maybe you’re already bored with the idea.

Well, walking into Saper Galleries, at 433 Albert Ave. in East Lansing, you realize that all your preconceived notions about art galleries are untrue.

Roy Saper first opened the gallery in 1978 in his home on Bailey Street in East Lansing and saw customers by appointment only. The gallery was the culmination of Saper’s dream to “buy artwork and share it with people.”

In 1985, things started to get too big for his home, so he looked for a new location.

“We looked all over the area: Lansing, East Lansing, Okemos,” he said. “Then we found this junky, vacant lot. So I designed our building, and we moved in May of 1986, a week after my son was born.”

Over the years, Saper Galleries has been host to a multitude of different art show. The 2006 Picasso show won Décor Magazine’s top award in 2007, and the ongoing exhibit on Dr. Seuss paintings is receiving great attention. Saper credits his years of success to his unique way of conducting business.

“There are too many followers and not enough leaders,” he says. “If you want to advance in this world, you need to be a leader. It’s easy to copy, but it takes a little more work to come up with something original. Rather than doing what others do, step back and ask, ‘how can I make it better?’ I’ve created something that seems right, and I’ve done my own thing.”

When you walk into Saper Galleries, you certainly can feel the difference between it and other art galleries. Either Roy or another worker immediately greets you and thanks you for stopping by. And there’s no pressure to buy as you look at the 1,500 pieces of artwork, ranging from paintings and sculptures to glassware and vases.

“Our doors are open,” Saper explains. “We try to make it like a public place, but it´s totally privately owned. It’s more like a living room, not a museum or a library. I want people to be totally comfortable. You can even bring in your homework and kick off your shoes if you want.”

In designing the gallery, Saper was very careful to be as environmentally friendly as possible. It’s a rarity to see lights on, due to the vast number of skylights, bringing in more natural light, which Saper says is the best way to view art. And even when the lights do come on, there are sensors that will dim when no one is around.

The entrance has two doors, designed to prevent a blast of cold air from nipping at your heels. The walls are three times as thick as the average wall, helping to insulate the gallery.

“I tried to think of everything when designing it,” Saper said. “Starting from scratch thinking efficiently just makes more sense. Americans are too wasteful. We need to save resources and save money, especially now.”

Saper is really just concerned with helping people, not only in getting art but also helping themselves.

“I’m honest,” he says, “I’ll tell you straight, but in a positive way. If someone brings in their artwork, I won’t just turn them away; I’ll give guidance, tell them how to get people to pay attention to their work. We can all value from criticism from someone who has knowledge. I focus on helping people out, specifically in the visual art, and I always will.”

Saper Galleries has also helped out in selecting pieces of artwork in many Lansing-area businesses and public places. One of the more well-known pieces is the statue in front of Oldsmobile Park, the Lansing Lugnuts’ stadium: a baseball player autographing a baseball for a child, with two other kids seated on a bench nearby. Saper also has another big project up his sleeve.

“It’s intended for this area, and it will be one of the most significant sculptures in the area. I’ve flown to New York and Mexico City to work it out.” He adds with a smile, “But it’s not announced yet.”

Saper plans on being a permanent fixture in the area for another 30 years, if possible. It’s his dedication to the arts and patronage to the community that won him one of the City of East Lansing’s Crystal Awards in 1988, the first year they were awarded.

“There’s no expectation that you have to walk out of here and have bought something,” he says. “It’s about creating a connection to the artwork. Enjoy yourself, and if you’re not, then you haven’t been here long enough.”

Saper Galleries

433 Albert Ave., East Lansing 10 a.m.- 6 p.m. Monday - Saturday and Thursdays until 9 p.m.  (517) 351-0815 www.sapergalleries.com

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'Oasis' found at Saper Galleries

By Nick Krizinski
The State News
Published: March 3, 2009

Josh Radtke The State News Saper Galleries owner Roy Saper meticulously cleans display shelves in his gallery, 433 Albert Ave. Saper takes great pride in the artwork he displays as he buys all the pieces himself. He said although selling the artwork is great, it’s always hard to see it go.

    

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The Greater Lansing  Business Monthly

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The New Citizens Press
 

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Lansing State Journal

November 17, 2008

Saper builds business into an East Lansing mainstay

Kathryn Prater
kprater@lsj.com

     

Photos by Jeremy Herliczek/Lansing State Journal

Left:  'Art of Dr. Seuss': The Saper Galleries in East Lansing is currently featuring "The Art of Dr. Seuss!" during the gallery's 30th anniversary year.

Right: Labor of love: Over three decades, Roy Saper has grown Saper Galleries and Custom Framing at 433 Albert Ave. in East Lansing.

EAST LANSING - Roy Saper started his art collection as a teenager, spending most of the money he'd save to buy one painting. 

That collection has grown into a business - and a downtown East Lansing mainstay. Over the last three decades, Saper has built up a well-known gallery that boasts 2,000 works of art and reaches art lovers all around the world.

As Saper Galleries enters its 30th year, Roy Saper, 56, still handpicks each artist and piece of art - just like the Victor Vasarely serigraph, or silk screen, he bought for $750 at age 17.

"I bought the artwork because I felt very strongly about it. It's artwork I would hang in my home," he said. "I strive for perfection in all that we do. I always want everything to be the best."

The 6,000-square-foot gallery at 433 Albert Ave. also has a custom framing shop. The gallery's works are originals and limited editions. They include paintings, sculptures, drawings, water colors, mobiles, ceramics and hand-blown glass. Original pieces range in price from $20 to $140,000, Saper said.

"What I like to do is hear what people want and acquire what people want," Saper said. "We bring in the artists that I like and I feel we can have a future relationship with - artists who I believe represent the interests of the people of mid-Michigan. It's the people of mid-Michigan for whom this gallery was created."

Building relationships

About 1,000 artists request Saper Galleries display their work, but Saper said he can accept only three or four new artists a year. If one proves popular, Saper may offer an exhibition.

An exhibition dedicated to the works of Theodor Seuss Geisel - better known as Dr. Seuss - is on display until Jan. 4. Previous exhibitions have included Norman Rockwell and Pablo Picasso.

The gallery has three full-time employees, Saper said.

Saper Galleries' commitment to continuing customer relationships beyond the purchase of artwork is what sets the gallery apart, he said. For example, the gallery may send customers biographical information about their favorite artists or invite them to special receptions if the artists are in town. The gallery also offers free delivery and installation.

"We've built this business with one transaction at a time, but we look at every transaction as the beginning of a relationship, not the end of a relationship," Saper said.

Art collector Kevin Scott, an attorney and law professor at Thomas M. Cooley Law School, moved to Okemos in 1996.

"Roy and his staff were so very welcoming and genuine," said Scott, 53. "I came quickly to understand this was high-quality, high service - an important life endeavor versus someone just making money in the art gallery business."

24-hour online chat

Saper also is the main person to respond to the gallery's 24-hour online chat on its Web site, sapergalleries.com.

It draws inquiries from 22 countries, from those searching for artwork to those needing framing services. Saper's known to answer inquiries as late - or early - as 4 a.m.

More than half of Saper Galleries' business comes from outside the Lansing area. Last month, 60 percent of October sales came from out of state, and the majority of those were outside the country, Saper said.

He declined to give exact figures, but said the gallery is profitable. It has about 7,500 recent clients.

One industry expert said Saper is ahead of the online game.

A recent readership survey found half of 24,000 readers of "Decor" trade magazine have Web sites, managing editor Kristin Stefek Brashares said.

"You would think in this day and age, with the amount of people who are online shopping, there would be more. I would say our industry is kind of slow to get into the Internet," said Stefek Brashares, whose art and framing publication is based in St. Louis, Mo.

The U.S. Census Bureau reported 6,328 retail and wholesale art dealers nationwide in 2002, said Dimitrios Delis, marketing research director of the Jackson-based Photo Marketing Association. They made $4.2 billion in sales.

Michigan was home to 173 art dealers in 2002, making $134.5 million in sales, the Census Bureau said.

In 2007, there were about 6,000 independent framing shops in the United States, a $2.8 billion industry, Delis said. About 800 art galleries offer framing services.

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East Lansing Towne Courier

 November 16, 2008

EAST LANSING — From Rembrandt to Picasso, to Norman Rockwell and Peter Max, Saper Galleries has exhibited the works of the masters over the last 30 years.

The gallery is celebrating its 30th year of creating noteworthy and unique art exhibitions that have received international acclaim, all at its downtown East Lansing location.

East Lansing resident and gallery owner Roy Saper started the business in 1978 at his former Bailey Street home, soon after completing his graduate studies in economics at Michigan State University.

He began collecting original works of art as a teen-ager.

"I remember when I was a young teen-ager at home in Flint, taping reproductions of works to my walls in my basement bedroom at home," Saper recalled.

It was the early 1960s, and the Beatles had yet to appear on Ed Sullivan's show. There was the lure of music — a longed-for guitar appeared on his bed one day, thanks to his parents — but the pull of art was much stronger.

"A cousin of mine reminded me about how, when I went through Chicago, I would buy works of art," Saper said.

"I've always had this fascination for the talent and ability of others. Not just in the visual arts, but anyone who has great command of their field, be it speaking, writing, thinking, journalists — people in all fields. You admire great talent and ability."

Despite his youth and relative lack of funds, Saper pursued his passion.

Money invested

"My admiration was so great that I put my money where my mouth (was) and said this was so beautiful, I want to own it," he said.

Saper's development as an artist included spending his 10th grade year at the Interlochen Arts Academy in northern Michigan. He played the violin.

"There were about 200 of us kids from all over the world, and they were (each) the equivalent of the valedictorian or concertmaster from their school," he recalled.

"Everyone was phenomenally smart, phenomenally talented. It was a great school, a great experience."

His collecting got more serious as a Michigan State University student, as Saper began attending auctions around Lansing.

"I remember going to those auctions and buying works of art. I had never heard of the artist, but I loved the works of art," he recalled.

That moment

One memorable evening, the 17-year-old spent the then-staggering sum of $750 for a painting by 20th-century Hungarian-French abstract artist Victor Vasarely.

"I did it because I loved it so much, I wanted to have it," he recalled.

The business formed when friends wanted to buy art from his collection, most of which came from New York and other art centers of the world.

"A friend of mine in New York loved some of the works I had from my descriptions of them," Saper said. "She bought some of those works of art that I had, and I came to the realization that if someone in the mid-Michigan area wanted to acquire an Alexander Calder lithograph or a Victor Vasarely, where would you go to get it? You wouldn't go around here - you couldn't find it."

Saper devoted much of his wages from lawn mowing and baby-sitting to growing his collection, and has rarely looked back over the last 40 years.

"What I've learned - when you see something you want, get it, because tomorrow it will either be ... unavailable or unaffordable," he noted.

Before opening his own place, Saper visited with gallery owners around the country, asking questions about the artists they represented, as well as how to gain a greater appreciation for different styles of art.

The predecessor to Saper Galleries, 20th Century Fine Arts, opened its doors in the summer of 1978.

Gallery takes shape

After operating the business on an appointment basis for seven years, Saper designed and built the current gallery building in downtown East Lansing, opening that location in 1986.

"1985 is when we started building this place," he said. "I realized I needed to take this to the next level."

Saper's wife, Nell, gave birth to their oldest son, Adam, the week before the gallery's debut. Younger son Jay is an East Lansing High School senior.

To build his art inventory, Saper polled public figures and asked who their favorite artists were. He then bought original works of art by those artists and that became the basis for the first artwork displayed at the new Saper Galleries location.

"I asked them, 'If they could have any artist in the world, who would they want to display in their home?' They all responded, and I think most people said (Marc) Chagall," Saper recalled.

"I went out and I bought artwork by all these people, and that became the first exhibition."

Along the way, Saper earned one of the inaugural Crystal Awards in 1988. The Crystal Awards honor businesses, individuals and organizations who have impacted the quality of life in East Lansing.

For its major exhibitions the gallery often brings to East Lansing some of the world's most popular artists, allowing the public (at no charge) to meet and speak with the artists. It's been an important presence in the lives of area residents, even though they may not realize it.

A jewel

East Lansing resident Kevin Epling is a director of the Matt Epling Creative Arts Competition and a member of the East Lansing Arts Commission.

"As an East Lansing resident, what Roy has created with Saper Galleries is a jewel in the crown of East Lansing. It's a wonderful facility for artists and residents alike, and Roy has brought great exhibitions to town, things people might not otherwise have had a chance to see," Epling said.

"On a personal note, he helped out with our art competition in judging, and that's just helping extend the arts to the next generation within East Lansing."

Contact Dawn Parker at dlparker@gannett.com or (800) 543-9913, ext. 506.

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SAPER EXHIBIT SHOWS THE MANY SIDES OF DR SEUSS 
Including insecticide

By LAWRENCE COSENTINO
Lansing CityPulse

“I Can Read With My Eyes Shut,” he recited, grinning through his graying beard. Who can blame him? If you’re American and under 65, you probably started life that way, with your diapered butt on a carpet, glued to the adventures of the Cat in the Hat, Yertle the Turtle or some other Dr. Seuss beastie with a long neck and girly eyelashes. But Saper wasn’t reverting to childhood. He was clearing the decks for a big new show. He looked as excited as McGrew, the hero of Dr. Seuss’ “If I Ran the Zoo.” Down went the sober landscapes and portraits in the main galleries.

For his 30th anniversary show, Saper wanted big fun. He also wanted to showcase an artist everybody knows and nobody knows. The result is “The Art of Dr. Seuss,” a touring exhibit authorized by the estate of Dr. Seuss that kicked off Sunday in East Lansing. Of course, the show salutes Theodore Geisel, AKA Dr. Seuss, as the subversive fantasist who liberated children’s books from the conformist blahs of Dick and Jane. But the exhibit also goes outside the margins to put Geisel into context as an advertising man, editorial cartoonist, magazine artist, wartime propagandist and moonlighting painter.

“Millions of people grew up with his books, but Dr. S euss is only beginning to be recognized as a fine artist, and all but unknown in the way this show reveals him,” Saper said. Or, as Seuss put it: “My new zoo , McG rew Zoo, will make people talk . My new zoo, McGrew Zoo, will make people gawk.” People began to gawk and talk as soon as the Saper show went up last week. At the First Sunday opener, Saper greeted almost 1,000 people in one afternoon. Visitors ranged in age from nine weeks to nine decades, and smiles were much more abundant than they were at Saper’s 2006 Picasso show.

When it comes to shared cultural experience, you can’t press a bigger, brighter multi-generational button in the American brain than Dr. Seuss. Flanked by friends, Michigan State University freshman Katie O’Donnell stood under a wall-mounted animal head with ram’s horns and giant eyeballs like hard-boiled eggs. A label under the trophy read “Goo-Goo- Eyed Tasmanian Wolghast.” O’Donnell whipped out her cell phone and called her parents, who live in Battle Creek. “Now you have to come visi t m e, bec ause you hav e to see this thing,” she told them. The Wolghast is one of several pieces of “unorthodox taxidermy” peering from the gallery walls. “Every pompous corporate boardroom should have one,” Saper said. Geisel built the fanciful creatures from real animal parts his dad brought home from the Forest Park Zoo in Springfield, Mass. Across from the taxidermy, two college students looked at a display of advertisements dating from the 1920s to the 1940s. Several ads trumpeted the virtues of Flit, an insecticide. One ad shows a Suessian mosquito committing suicide with it. “Improved with DDT,” another ad boasted.

“That’s against the law now,” one of the students said in awe. Geisel’s slogan, “Quick, Henry, the Flit,” became a national catchphrase in the 1930s. A 1936 Flit ad showed a little girl urging her brother, who has swallowed a bug, to gargle with the stuff. About 40 years later, in 1971, Seuss created “The Lorax,” a landmark children’s book advocating environmental stewardship and bemoaning the “gluppity-glup” and “schloppity-schlopp” poisoning rivers and forests. That’s the kind of twist that fascinates Bill Dreyer, curator of “The Art of Dr. Seuss.” For 10 years, Dreyer has been researching and writing a book on Seuss’ artistic legacy, to appear in 2009. “The show is not just about Dr. Seuss’ work,” he said. “It’s a history of the changes in our culture.”

Little-known stuff like the old ads make up the backbone of the show, a not-for-sale, museum-type array of 32 panels with 200 images that cover Geisel’s magazine covers, ads, oil paintings, unpublished material and many other facets of his career, with lots of explanatory text. It’s an impressively thorough collection; there’s even a rusty old Flit spray gun. About 200 more prints feature the familiar Dr. Seuss characters, in various sizes, with text cards by Saper and fanciful frames to match the images. Dreyer said the material for the show began to come out in 1995, when Seuss’s widow, Audrey Geisel, authorized a book, “The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss.” (Theodore Geisel died in 1991.) “In 1997, she gave us permission to recreate some of these as limited editions,” Dryer said.

Saper and Dreyer admit up front that all the Dr. Suess images in the show are reproductions. (The magazines and other ephemera are original.) Most of the originals are in archives at the University of California in San Diego, or hanging in Geisel’s home in La Jolla, where Audrey still lives. The comprehensiveness of the show makes it easy to trace Dr. Seuss’ distinctive style (the “golden thread,” Dreyer calls it) through the phases of his career. A 1933 magazine cover sports a prototype of Yertle the Turtle. A 1949 Ford ad uses a glove-on-a-stick contraption Seuss used 20 years later, in “Green Eggs and Ham.” Even when the material is racy or politically charged, it’s still obviously Seuss. An unpublished book, “The Seven Lady Godivas,” bulges with inflated-looking Seussian nudes.

A caged elephant in a 1944 political cartoon is winningly Horton-esque, even with a Nazi swastika on its backside. One amazing painting, “The Rather Odd Myopic Woman Riding Piggyback on One of Helen’s Many Cats,” features a signature Dr. Seuss cat, strategically positioned in a woman’s crotch. An unpublished 1938 novelette addresses Depression-era unemployment in familiar imagery and verse: “Then back to Nobsks with sighs and sobsks…

There are, in Bobsks, no jobsks for Obsks.” For those who are used to seeing Dr. Seuss’ contraptions, creatures and landscapes in the flat coloring-book format of his children’s books, another aspect of the Saper show will come as a shock. Wedged into the crowd at Sunday’s opening was Dennis Preston, longtime Lansing caricature specialist and commercial artist. Despite the crush of bodies, Preston wasn’t budging from a row of prints reproducing Geisel’s phantasmagoric oil paintings. Dreyer said the paintings (cheesily dubbed the “secret art” in this show) were made at night and never left Geisel’s house in La Jolla until Audrey Geisel began to authorize prints in the late 1990s. One of the paintings, “The Joyous Leaping of Uncanned Salmon,” looks like paisley rain falling in reverse from a rainbow-dyed shag rug, in close-up.

“This is psychedelic,” Preston said. “Get some 3-D glasses and this would pop off the wall.” Preston, who had his own show of psychedelic rock posters at the Creole Gallery a couple of years ago, saw a kindred spirit in Dr. Seuss. “I used to copy his characters and paint them onto shirts,” he said. “Of course, I grew up reading his books. But when you’re a kid you don’t think about this dimensional stuff.” Another print, “O solo meow-o,” features a cat poling a gondola through a wild network of canals and streets. The colors drench your eyes until they sink into your face like two shreds of sponge in a lake.

“He was like a Fauvist from the earlier part of the last century,” Saper said, naming the color-mad early-20th-century modernist movement that produced Matisse’s eye-spanking “Woman With a Hat” and many other vivid works. In the oil paintings, Geisel seems to spin the color wheel with total abandon, but Saper pointed out that the combinations are carefully planned. “Some people are born with perfect pitch,” Saper said.

“He was born with perfect color. He just knows which colors go with others.” The same goes for the more controlled world of the Dr. Seuss books. Geisel’s career as the most beloved and best-selling children’s author began in 1937, with “To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street,” but was interrupted by wartime propaganda work with film director Frank Capra and Warner Brothers animator Chuck Jones. One of the characters they created was Private Snafu, a bumbling soldier who demonstrated the wrong way to do everything. (You can check out some of these films on YouTube.) Geisel came back after the war with a string of brilliant books, from “McElligot’s Pool” in 1947 to his last, “Oh, the Places You’ll Go,” published in 1990. Some of the most interesting panels in the show are reproductions of Geisel’s book pages as they were delivered to the printer, with “color calls” written in the margins specifying hue, saturation and other details.

“He’s not just thinking regular threeor four-color children’s book,” Saper said. “’Cat in the Hat’ is a great example. He uses saturated blues and reds, because he knows they grab your eye.” When Saper chose Dr. Seuss for his 30th anniversary, he wasn’t motivated solely by admiration for Geisel’s technical prowess. Saper doesn’t conceal his disdain for a lot of modern art, a view he shares with Geisel. “He didn’t like the pompous attitude of some people, particularly museum curators who would hang works of art where you couldn’t tell whether it was upside down or right side up,” Saper said.

According to “Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel,” a biography by Judith and Neil Morgan, Geisel once played a trick on a friend who lectured him condescendingly on modern art. Geisel rubbed a piece of art paper with charcoal, dabbed it with hunks of bread soaked in vodka and sold it to the man for $500 as an “original Escorabus.” (There is no such artist.) “If I can do this stuff, it couldn’t be that great,” Geisel is said to have cracked. It’s a philosophy after Saper’s own heart. Forget the shock of the new, little Cindy Lou Who — there’ll be no ooze or goo when McGrew runs the zoo.

THE ART OF DR SEUSS
Through Jan. 4, 2009 Saper Galleries, 433 Albert Ave., East Lansing Hours: 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Monday-Wednesday & Friday-Saturday 10 a.m. – 9 p.m. Thursday 1-4 p.m. First Sunday (517) 351-0815 www.sapergalleries.com

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Seuss at Saper

Explore the bright wit, art of the man behind Dr. Seuss' whimsical stories

Lansing State Journal

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Michigan Retailer

July/August, 2008

Saper Galleries, an art gallery with custom framing services in East Lansing, has been conserving natural resources and using green business practices for the past 22 years. The shop minimizes the use of paper by processing all Internet orders electronically, including invoicing and appraisals. Through extensive recycling and donation of scrap material, the store’s weekly trash output is much less than that of an average family residence, says owner Roy Saper.

Throughout its 6,000-square-foot building, Saper Galleries relies mostly on natural daylight through numerous skylights (up to 48-feet long). The lights are rarely turned on, and when lights are used, they are programmed to dim down when the spaces are not occupied.

The UV-filtering, double-layer skylights also filter out heat during the warmer months and provide additional insulation. The ceilings, roof and 14-inch thick walls are highly insulated so that the store’s high-efficiency zoned furnaces rarely cycle on.

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

Lowdown/State News

By Peter Nichols

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Gallery to show Michigan artist

Towne Courier

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."

Born in Hastings, Michigan and raised in a small house in Freeport with a large family, Callihan would wander through the fields or fish along Coldwater Creek, with friends or alone, soaking up the peace and quiet.

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.

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Published July 17, 2006

Take 5 with Roy Saper of Saper Galleries

Five questions. Five answers.

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.

ROY SAPER

Owner, Saper Galleries

• Where: 433 Albert St., East Lansing

• Employees: 5

• Services: Art acquisition, sales, exhibits and framing

• Founded: 1978

• Education: Bachelor's degree in computer science from Michigan State University; doctorate work in economics at MSU

• Family: Wife, Nell Kuhnmuench; sons Adam, 20, and Jay, 15

• On buying art: "A work of art that's an 11 on a 1-to-10 scale is a piece of art that you want to acquire. If it's only a 3 or 4, take some thought, take some hesi- tation and something else might be coming down the pike."

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NOISE

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."

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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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Picasso exhibit juggles grace, symbolism and whimsy

Lansing City Pulse

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)

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.

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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.)

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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.

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At the wild banquet of modern art (picture Andy Warhol as host, Salvador Dali as DJ and Pablo Picasso as bouncer), the earthy canvases of Tunis Ponsen stick out like baskets of bread on a table dusted with cocaine.

Not that the moderns aren’t fun. There’s nothing like trundling off to the museum to eye-wrestle with three-eyed women, electric pink soup cans, half-acres of stringy viscera or pianos covered in ants.

Roy Saper, who is sitting on a dense shale of a 1,000 Ponsen works acquired from the artist’s niece, says this is the biggest show the artist has ever had. It not only eclipses the biggest exhibit Ponsen had during his lifetime, at Chicago’s Drake Hotel in 1938 (47 paintings); it doubles the amount of works shown at the "Lost Paintings" tour of the mid-1990s, which wintered at MSU’s Kresge Museum in 1996 and made Ponsen hundreds of local converts.

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?"