Versluis and Behrens working out the Iowa bugs

Iowa Insect Series, David Versluis and Roy R. Behrens

More than ten years ago (if you can believe it), my good friend and fellow designer David Versluis (we have both since retired from university teaching) decided to collaborate. Actually, he came up with a plan, and asked if I were up to it.

Over the years, he had amassed an assortment of (kaput) Iowa insects. His proposal was to scan those, at high resolution, and to send me the scans by email, one at a time. I had free rein. After receiving the scanned image, I had to alter it someway—major or minor—for the purpose of making a digital montage, using Adobe Photoshop. I would then send it back to him, and he in turn would make a move—and pass it back to me again.

We did this fairly rapidly, and after five or six back-and-forth sessions, we soon mutually came to suspect that the work was finished. The ones that I especially recall are a beetle, a cicada, a dragon fly, and a hornet (above, in a cropped version) that was eventually found to be not a hornet but a yellow jacket wasp. In a few short weeks we ended up with a substantial, original cluster, titled the Iowa Insect Series.

After finishing the series, it was David’s initiative to print them at large scale, and to be watchful of competitions or exhibitions which they could be submitted to. For almost a decade, they were exhibited multiple times (through his efforts) at various galleries and museums around the country. The most recent one that I recall was an exhibition last year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, called Evolving Graphic Design.

However, I have just now learned from David that two of the pieces have recently been accepted for an upcoming exhibition—called Awake! Printmaking in Action, at the Ann Arbor Art Center in Michigan, which will run from April 14 through May 28, 2023.

adrift in milan / never too late for the last supper

Wind Instrument [detail] © Roy R. Behrens

Abel Warshawsky, The memories of an American Impressionist. Kent OH: Kent State University Press, 1980, pp. 86-87—

In connection with the Last Supper, a friend of mine, Samuel Cahan, a well-known newspaper artist who had been with the New York World for thirty years, told me of an amusing incident which occured when he and his wife visited Milan a few years ago. Speaking no Italian, they had asked their hotel porter to procure an English-speaking cabby to take them about. To the latter my friend very carefully explained that they wished to see the Last Supper. "Last supper?" replied the cabby, "yes , yes. Me understand!" Whereupon he started driving them round the town and finally into the country.

After the drive had extended for several miles, my friend, fearing that there must be some mistake, repeated his instructions to the driver. "Last supper?" he yelled back, "Sure! Me understand!" and continued to drive. Late that evening the two Americans were finally brought back to the city in a state approaching nervous exhaustion. Drawing up his carriage in front of a brilliantly lit edifice, the vetturino opened the cab and ushered his fares into a fashionable restaurant, proudly giving them to understand that he had brought them back in good time for the desired "late supper."

New talks & posters soon at Hartman Reserve

The fourth and final installment in an on-going series of poster exhibitions will be on display during November and December 2019 at the Interpretive Center at the Hartman Reserve Nature Center in Cedar Falls IA. These new nature-themed posters (created by author and designer Roy R. Behrens) are intended as promotions for a series of informative talks on nature-related topics, one per month, always on the second Sunday.

The upcoming presentations include a program by Robert Pruitt, Executive Director of the Cedar Valley Arboretum and Botanic Gardens (Sunday, November 10, at 2:00 pm) on "Creating Monarch and Pollinator Zones in the Cedar Valley," and a talk on area water trails, titled "Paddling the Cedar Valley and Beyond," by well-known area naturalist Vern Fish (Sunday, December 8, at 2:00 pm). All presentations are free and open to the public.

Concurrent with the Second Sunday Speaker Series talks and other events at the Hartman Center during November and December, the poster exhibition will be on public view in the Interpretive Center. In addition, all items in the exhibit can also be viewed online.

New talks and posters soon at Hartman Reserve

Hartman Reserve poster exhibition and talks (2019)

A new exhibition of twenty-five posters pertaining to plants and other natural forms will be on display throughout September and October 2019 at the Interpretive Center at the Hartman Reserve Nature Center in Cedar Falls IA. They can also now be viewed online.

This is the third exhibition of posters in a series of four, intended as promotions for a series of informative talks on nature-related topics, one per month, always on the Second Sunday. The upcoming presentations include a program on dinosaurs (which kids and adults will both enjoy) by Sherman Lundy (Sunday, September 8, at 2:00 pm), and an illustrated talk about various prairie-based creatures that fly by photographer and writer Bill Witt (Sunday, October 13, at 2:00 pm). All presentations are free and open to the public.

The posters in the exhibition are focused on the forms of plants, some of which are native to a prairie setting, while others were among the plants that flourished in the age of dinosaurs.  All of the posters in this exhibit are derived in part from the black-and-white plant photographs of German photographer Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932).  His plant photographs were first published in 1928 in a book titled Art Forms in Nature, and are now in public domain. For these posters, graphic designer Roy R. Behrens has adapted the photographs by removing the backgrounds, zooming up on details, cropping, and adding color effects.

Talk on birds at Hartman Reserve Nature Center

Poster © Roy R. Behrens (2019)

Above One of twenty-five posters pertaining to birds, designed as promotions for a series of informative talks, one per month, always on the second Sunday. Coming soon is a talk about area birds by members of the Prairie Rapids Audubon Society (PRAS) (Sunday, August 11, at 2:00 pm) at the Interpretive Center at the Hartman Reserve Nature Center in Cedar Falls IA. All presentations are free and open to the public.

In connection with this presentation series (called Second Sunday Speakers), an exhibition of bird posters, designed by Roy R. Behrens, was installed at the center on July 1 and will remain on view during August. All the posters can also be viewed online.  This is the second in a series of four poster exhibitions on nature-related topics.

Repugnant Wallpaper | Dallas Guffey

Wallpaper | Dallas Guffey ©2015

Above In graphic design studio courses, as an exercise in rapid fire problem solving, I sometimes ask my students to work in class, within a time limit, in producing fresh solutions to seemingly off-beat assignments. In one case, for example, I asked them to come up with a design for "repugnant wallpaper." The solution reproduced above is by Dallas Guffey.

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Robert Kipness, Robert Kipness: A Working Artist's Life. Hanover NH: University Press of New England, 2011 [recalling an experience in a painting class taught by artist Stuart Edie (1908-1974), probably in the early 1950s, when Kipness was a student at the University of Iowa], pp. 59-60—

After two or three sessions of witnessing this outpouring of energy [as Kipness worked on his paintings in class] from the wild-eyed kid from the literature department, Edie came over to my space and said, "Very interesting, Kipness. Let me show you something," and he picked up one of my brushes, mixed some paint on my palette, and moved the brush toward my painting. Instinctively I grasped his wrist with a grip that seemed to frighten him. His pale blue-gray eyes widened. "Tell me anything you want, but don't touch my work," I whispered, outraged that he would interfere with the surface of my painting. Realizing my grip was strong, and that I might be hurting hm, I released his wrist, and he put down my brush and walked away. Understandably, he didn't talk to me again for over a month.

From a respectful distance we grew to like each other…He was a kind and perceptive man…

We came to an agreement. He would leave me alone in class, and as long as he felt I was making progress he would continue to let me be. If he judged otherwise I would either take instruction or he would give me a failing grade. Eventually he issued me a key to the building, allowing me to come and work anytime I wished. "Just make sure you put out the lights and see that the door is locked when you leave." In my eyes he was a prince, and I appreciate that my fierce enthusiasm and individuality were no threat to him. He was delighted to see me so consumed with painting, and he wanted to see what I could do. There was no battle of egos, just respect and a kindly concern for my young life. Later I more fully understood that his response was what he thought would be best for me.

There is an interesting online interview with Kipness by Ira Goldberg at LINEA: The Artist's Voice. There is additional information about three of the artists who taught at the University of Iowa while Kipness was a student there: Stuart Edie, Byron Burford and James Lechay. My own memories of Lechay are online here.

Rod Library Art Exhibition | Roy R. Behrens

Above Through the kindness and efficiency of Angela Pratesi and Julie Ann Beddow at the Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa, seven of my recent works are on exhibit this summer in the library's Learning Commons. These digital montages, which date from 2011-2015, are part of the library's permanent art collection. See installation views above, with single views of each below.

Auto Parts © 2013

Dorado © 2015

Barbarian Seville © 2011

Deplorable Strikes © 2011

Indigenous Nativity © 2011

A Loss for Words © 2011

Nautilus Bridge © 2011

Shunting, Hooting and Milking the Bull

Montage © Roy R. Behrens 2015

Elias Canetti (The Human Province)—

He lays sentences like eggs, but he forgets to incubate them.

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Samuel Johnson—

Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull. 

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Sir Frederick John Burrows—

Unlike my predecessors, I have devoted more of my life to shunting and hooting than to hunting and shooting [alluding to his former career as a railway man].

Brushed by the Grasses of Self-Reproach

Montage | Roy R. Behrens 2015 | Puffin Wikipedia

Mae West—

You're a fine woman, Lou. One of the finest women that ever walked the streets.

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Pierre-Jules Renard—

It should not be thought that laziness is unproductive. Within it, you live intensely, like a hare listening. You swim in it like water; and are brushed by the grasses of self-reproach.

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Charles Dickens (The Pickwick Papers)—

Miss Bolo rose from the table considerably agitated, and went straight home, in a flood of tears and a sedan chair.

Jacquie Colvin | Self-Portrait Parody

Self-Portrait Parody © Jacquie Colvin c2008

In past years, as a way of acquainting my students with the intricacies of image adjustment (and modification) using Adobe Photoshop, I have sometimes used a "self-portrait parody" problem, in which students integrate photographs of themselves into public domain images of past historic works of art. An early problem, sometimes the results are amazing, sometimes not. Shown above is one of my favorite solutions (c2008), produced by Jacquie Colvin, a student who later went on to become the graphic designer at the Grout Museum District in Waterloo IA, as well as an excellent mentor for student interns who have subsequently worked with her. The artwork of which this was a parody (the pair is reproduced below) was Self-Portrait in a Straw Hall, by Elisabeth Louise Vigée Lebrun (c1782).

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Eudora Welty, "A Sweet Devouring" in The Eye of the Storm: Selected Essays and Reviews (New York: Vintage, 1979), p. 281—

All that summer I used to put on a second petticoat (our librarian wouldn't let you past the front door if she could see through you), ride my bicycle up the hill and "through the Capitol" (shortcut) to the library with my two read books in the basket (two was the limit you could take out at one time when you were a child and also as long as you lived), and tiptoe in ("Silence") and exchange them for two more in two minutes. Selections was no object. I coasted the two new books home, jumped out of my petticoat, read (I suppose I ate and bathed and answered questions put to me), then in all hope put my petticoat back on and rode those two books back to the library to get my next two. The librarian was the lady in town who wanted to be it. She called me by my full name and said, "Does your mother know where you are? You know good and well the fixed rule of the library: Nobody is going to come running back here with any book on the same day they took it out. Get both those things out of here and don't come back til tomorrow. And I can practically see through you."

The model (left) and the mimic

Labels, Stamps, Currency | Blake Schlawin

Luggage labels © Blake Schlawin 2014

Above and below Proposals for luggage labels, postage stamps and currency for an imaginary country called Sequitur, designed by Blake Schlawin, graphic design student at the University of Northern Iowa, in a course called Graphic Design I, as taught by Roy R. Behrens.

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William H. Gass, interviewed in Tom LeClair and Larry McGaffery, eds., Anything Can Happen (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), p. 158—

I think contemporary fiction is divided between those who are still writing performatively and those who are not. Writing for voice, in which you imagine a performance in the auditory sense going on, is traditional and dying. The new mode is not performative and  not auditory. It's destined for the printed page, and you are really supposed to read it the way they teach you to read in speed reading. You are supposed to crisscross the page with your eye, getting references and gists; you are supposed to see it flowing on the page, and not sound it in the head. If you do sound it, it is so bad you can hardly proceed… By the mouth for the ear: that's the way I like to write. I can still admire the other—the way I admire surgeons, broncobusters, and tight ends. As writing, it is that foreign to me.

Block of stamps © Blake Schlawin 2014

Currency © Blake Schlawin 2014

Digital Montage | Abaton Magazine

Above A digital montage by Roy R. Behrens (2011), titled Flight of Ideas (aka Attention to Detail) has been published in ABATON: Des Moines University Literary Review. Issue Seven (Fall 2013), p. 14.

Roy R. Behrens, Flight of Ideas (2011) ©, digital montage

Luther College Writers Festival 2013

Intersections Between Word and Image

University of Northern Iowa graphic design professor Roy R. Behrens will be among the presenters at the 2013 Luther College Writers Festival in Decorah IA on Saturday, September 28. He will appear on a panel on New Writing, New Media (3:00-5:00 pm), and will talk about "Intersections Between Word and Image." Beginning in the 1970s, as a designer/illustrator, he collaborated with various American writers, including Jerzy Kosinski, Guy Davenport, Marvin Bell and others.

Lincoln Assassination | Melanie Walde

Above Info graphic about the assassination of US President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, by Melanie Walde, a graphic design student at the University of Northern Iowa. Copyright © by Melanie Walde 2013.

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Joseph Epstein in A Line Out for a Walk. New York: W.W. Norton, 1991—

When I began teaching I worried gravely about being able to fill a fifty-minute class; now, a decade or so later, I have been known to run over when teaching a two-and-a-half-hour class. Whence did this extra steam and stamina derive? From my own ever-expanding wisdom and ever-increasing powers of intellectual penetration? How nice to be able to think so, which I for a moment don't. More likely a leak has been sprung in my modesty. In what kind of work other than teaching can one rattle on at such prodigious length without fear of being told, mate, stow it? Some of the most interesting people I know are professors, but so also are some of the most profound bores.

Collections and Recollections | Danielle Shearer

Exhibition poster (2013) © Danielle Shearer

Above Promotional poster for a hypothetical exhibition called Collections and Recollections: Arrangements of Related Forms, designed by Danielle Shearer, graphic design student, University of Northern Iowa. Copyright © 2013 by Danielle Shearer.

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Anne Brunson, quoted in Remar Sutton and Mary Abbott Waite, eds., The Common Ground Book: A Circle of Friends. Latham NY: British American Publishing, 1992, pp. 275-276—

My daddy never went shopping, but while my mother was sick, he had to take me to buy a bathing suit. I was four or five, and he bought me an adult size-fourteen bathing suit, a size which I have never worn in my whole life.

When he got us home, Mother asked, "Why did you get her that bathing suit?"

He said, "That's the one she wanted."

Evidently he had said, "Pick out a bathing suit," and I had—a white two-piece. I can still remember it because you can't return a bathing suit, and every year I would try it on thinking that it might be the right size. It never was.

Aubrey Beardsley Portrait | Morgan Moe

Aubrey Beardsley, digital montage by Morgan Moe © 2013

Above Interpretive portrait of artist-writer Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898), a digital montage by Morgan Moe, graphic design student, University of Northern Iowa. Copyright © 2013 by Morgan Moe.

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Mary Costigan, quoted in Remar Sutton and Mary Abbott Waite, eds., The Common Ground Book: A Circle of Friends. Latham NY: British American Publishing, 1992, p. 273—

When I taught kindergarten in a church basement, the men's room was a couple of doors down from the kindergarten proper. I missed a little boy but knew that he was probably in the rest room. I waited a little while and he never came back. So I went down and spoke to him through the door, asked him if he was having problems or anything. I didn't get an answer. I kept talking to him, telling him to hurry up. No answer. Finally, I told him I was going to come and get him. To which the pastor's voice replied, "I'm in here."

Versluis | Behrens Beetle Montage

David Versluis & Roy R. Behrens, Beetle (©2012)

In two earlier posts, I talked about a recent collaboration with my friend and fellow designer David Versluis, in which (in early 2012) we worked together on a series of digital montages about Iowa insects. We did all this by email, by taking turns (as if we were playing chess) while passing files back and forth. One of my favorites is Yellow Jacket, and another is Cicada. But a third one that I like a lot is shown above, titled Beetle.

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Kenneth Williams, in R. Davies, ed., The Kenneth Williams Diaries (1993)—

How impossible it is for me to make regular entries in the diary. I suddenly remember how I used to puzzle over that word at school. Always wondering why diary was so like Dairy and what the connection was. Never found out.

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Anon (an old joke)—

Question: What do you call a Frenchman in sandals?
Answer: Philippe Philoppe.

Versluis | Behrens Cicada Montage

Cicada Digital Collage (2012) © David Versluis & Roy R. Behrens

Above In an earlier post, I talked about a series of digital collages (or montages) in which graphic designer David Versluis and I collaborated (exchanging files by email) during a period of several weeks in the winter of 2011-2012. I can't remember how many works were in the series (probably ten). Each work progressed through stages. Often, an earlier stage might be just as compelling as a later one. I think this is the final stage of one of my favorites. It began when David emailed me a scan of a cicada from his Iowa insect collection.

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From R.V. Jones, “The theory of practical joking—its relevance to physics,” in R.L. Weber, compiler, A Random Walk in Science. London: Institute of Physics, 1973, pp. 10-11—

[American physicist] R.W. Wood is said to have spent some time in a flat in Paris where he discovered that the lady in the flat below kept a tortoise in a window pen. Wood fashioned a collecting device from a broom-handle,and bought a supply of tortoises of dispersed sizes. While the lady was out shopping, Wood replaced her tortoise by one slightly larger. He repeated this operation each day until the growth of the tortoise became so obvious to its owner that she consulted Wood who, having first played a subsidiary joke by sending her to consult a professor at the Sorbonne whom he considered to be devoid of humor, advised her to write the press. When the tortoise had grown to such a size that several pressmen were taking a daily interest, Wood then reversed the process, and in a week or so the tortoise mysteriously contracted to its original dimensions.

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From Roy Paul Nelson, The Cartoonist. Eugene OR: Seven Gables Press, 1994, pp. 57-58—

Combining frequent spraying with baby talk, Margaret [a co-worker at a newspaper] worked hard to keep a bevy of plants alive in her work area. She paid special attention to a demagnetized cactus plant she kept next to her computer. This prompted a newsroom prank.

A.L. (Al) Blackerby’s wife ran the Cacti City store in New Camden. With her cooperation, Al and I sneaked back to the office each Friday night to substitute a slightly larger cactus for the one Margaret had grown used to that week. As someone with an art background, I drew the job of finding a cactus that matched the shape of the one to be replaced. The intervention of the weekend helped mask any inconsistencies. The growth change was just enough to catch her attention each Monday. She even wrote a feature, “Computer Nearness Spurs Cactus Growth,” about the phenomenon.

Then, of course, we reversed the process, making the plant grow smaller each week. Eventually we made the changes so dramatic and erratic that she couldn’t help but catch on. She traced the prank to Al and me, and, for a time, she wouldn’t speak to either of us.

One day, after we became friends again, she came to me to ask if I would teach her to drive. It was something I didn’t particularly want to do.

"What about your husband?" I asked.

"Oh, he already knows how."

Walt Whitman | Sarah Hedeen

Portrait of Walt Whitman (2012) © Sarah Hedeen

Above In a class about designing digital images, I asked my students to invent "interpretive portraits" of extraordinary men or women from the past, sung or unsung. Sarah Hedeen chose to portray American poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892), the so-called "father of free verse."

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Roy Paul Nelson, The Cartoonist: An Illustrated Story. Eugene OR: Seven Gables Press, 1994, p. 55—

Suddenly he got up, walked to the door, looked out, closed the door, bolted it, and came back in conspiratorial silence. He unfolded a worn sheet to reveal an elaborate but poorly drawn diagram of the male reproduction system with lots of marginal notes.

"This is for an idea I have for a new contraceptive to be taken by men the morning after," he explained. "Don't say anything about this to Mrs. Griffith."

Amelia Earhart | Megan Lehman

Portrait of Amelia Earhart (2012) © Megan Lehman

Above In a class about designing digital images, I asked my students to invent "interpretive portraits" of extraordinary men or women from the past, sung or unsung. Megan Lehman chose American aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart (1897-1937), who died when she was 39.

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Roy Paul Nelson, The Cartoonist: An Illustrated Story. Eugene OR: Seven Gables Press, 1994, pp. 66-67—

At the time a graduate student in engineering, Ryan had once worked for an American automaker, but he was fired for installing the steering wheels on the right sides of the dashboards. That was his first inkling that he had dyslexia. Fortunately, he got a job with an automaker in England, where he did quite well.