Arts
—
TOP: Larry
Griffin^ a senior
painting major,
returned to UNL
to finish his
degree almost 27
years after begin
ning cofiege. This
second and final
attempt at col
lege has him
more focused,
and he is consid
ering graduate
school.
BELOW: Grilling
was originally
more interested
in sculpture but
sakTI think fm
more successful
asa painter...'
u-;-..hi«il
nee committed
to his work, often
painting the
same thing mul
1 - ^
npieumes.
Heather Glenboski/DN
Courtesy of Larry Griffing
Fine art of maturity shines
through in Griffmg's paintings
BY BILLY SMUCK
Nearly 27 years after Larry Griffing
began college, he is finally realizing his
dream.
Working toward a bachelor's degree in
fine arts, this 46-year-old senior undergrad
uate is painting a new future for himself.
“As far back as grade school I wanted to
be an artist,” he said. "I remember telling
my second- grade teacher that’s what I was
going to be.”
The Lincoln High graduate went on to
attend the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
during the mid-1970s but never completed
his degree.
"It’s like I tell people sometimes - that I
had to take 36 semesters off to get my head
together,” Griffing said.
“Actually, I wasn’t very serious about
much of anything, and I didn’t have a clear
idea of where I was going or what I wanted
to do.”
Now he has re-enrolled at UNL, and this
time he is focused and driven. He was ini
tially more interested in sculpture, but now
that he has returned to school, painting is
where his heart is.
At some point, i moved to two-dimen
sional work, and I got better at it,” Griffing
said. “I think I’m more successful as a
painter than I was as a sculptor.”
Though he was away from school for 17
years, he wasn’t away from his art
"I never stopped making art. Even
when I wasn’t a student, I always did some
work,” he said.
Now he’s not just doing some work, he's
doing a lot and is doing it well.
"I’ve been much more serious and have
had better grades,” he said.
According to Professor Keith
Jacobshagen, who currently teaches
Griffing’s advanced painting course,
Griffing is one of a few students who stands
out from the rest of the class.
“Larry is very committed,” Jacobshagen
said. “He’s always arriving to class before I
do, and after class, he sticks around and
keeps working,”
Jacobshagen said Griffing’s work is well
planned.
“Larry has an ability to take an idea and
work in a linear trajectory,” he said. “He is
really able to test and probe and follow
through with it.
"He’ll paint something five or six or 10
different times, so you can see that idea
really mature. Often students don't have
that sensibility until much later on. In fact,
some never acquire it’’
Jacobshagen said Griffing has the
maturity to produce great art.
"It takes a mature mind to be able to
explore an idea to its logical conclusion like
that,” he said.
Granted, Griffing is older, but he doesn’t
necessarily feel that age and talent are cor
related.
“I don’t know how my age makes me
any better or worse as an artist,” Griffing
said.
Griffing’s paintings fall into two cate
gories: stylized landscapes and what he
refers to as “object paintings.”
“In the landscape paintings,” Griffing
said, “my goal is to capture the essence of
the landscape through the use of simplified
forms and expressive color.”
He said the object paintings are less for
mal.
“The object paintings are painted
almost comic-book style, in which I take
single objects or small groups of objects
and try to make the objects become pre
cious by isolating them and changing their
scale,” he said.
Griffingsaid
he wanted to 7 really do
think that the
important in his paint itself
painting. almost
Griffingsaid
one of his stm-iife competes with
paintings what I’m
demonstrates the . ..
relationship painting. Its
between the sub- part Of what
process"of Ihe tm painting."
painting.
“It’s not just a Larry Griffing
painting of some painter
green peppers
nvk/l
uuu luuiuvuvof
but the paint almost becomes part of the
subject matter because of the way I'm using
the paint,” he said.
“I really do think that the paint itself
almost competes with what I’m painting.
It's part of what I’m painting.”
Griffing’s paintings are often not
starved for paint; his particular style uses a
lotofit,hesaid.
“On some of my paintings, if you could
jam a ruler into the paint, at times you
could find paint anywhere from 1/4 to 1/8
inches thick,” he said.
Griffing does not attempt to be photo
graphically realistic in his work.
“If I wanted that, I'd probably just take a
photograph,” he said.
He said he feels that how he paints,
using different brushstrokes and colors, is
as important as what he paints.
"It’s as much the handling of the paint
as it is anything else,” he said.
In Griffing’s artist’s statement, which is
as brief and clear-cut as his philosophy and
approach to painting are, he wrote, “I hope
to create an emotional response to my
paintings.”
After graduation this summer, Griffing
said he would like to get his master's degree
and possibly teach at the university level, as
well as make a living selling his art
“I think that would be a great life,” he
said. “It would allow me to do something I
love, which is make art, and if I could make
a living at the same time, that would be a
dream come true.”
Courtesy of Larry Griffing
This painting of a pair of ray guns is an example of Griffing^ object paintings. He singles the objects out, changes
their size and makes the objects "pretious.” He also paints stylized landscape paintings.
Sharon Kolbet/DN
Anwar Ran^, 20 months, piays in one of the Q)iidren^
Museum's new water exhfeits.The museum held its grand open
rnguusweexena
Children's Museum finds new life in new space
■ Old favorites along with new
attractions give visitors more
options forfon.
BY KEN MORTON
At 2:25 p.m. Sunday, the new
Lincoln Children’s Museum sat rela
tively quiet.
A session had ended 15 minutes
earlier, and the volunteers and
employees of the new museum had
cleared the building at 1420 P St.,
readying themselves for the next
wave of eager children and parents.
Terry Rathe, the museum’s mar
keting director, talked to two new
volunteers to warn them of the inva
sion.
“Be prepared,” she said. “It’s
going to be bedlam.”
By 2:40 p.m., a distraught young
couple frantically scanned the sea of
young faces racing around the giant
apple tree that rises up the middle of
the museum.
“Well, he couldn’t have gone far,”
the woman said. "Let's go look in the
tree.”
Compared to the old location of
the Children’s Museum, finding a lost
child in the new museum is quite a
task.
The old structure at 13th and O
streets covered around 12,000 square
feet on one level.
The new museum houses 60
exhibits with more than 40,000
square feet on three levels.
For some, the old museum
shouldn’t even be mentioned in the
same sentence with the new one.
Dennis Nelson of Lincoln, who
was at the museum with his wife,
Julie, and his three children, said the
museums are completely different
experiences.
"We haven’t even gotten off of the
bottom level, and we’ve already seen
more here,” Nelson said.
Nelson’s 9-year-old son Travis
1
agreed with his dad.
“That prairie dog town is so cool,”
he said.
The prairie dog town is just one of
the many new, state-of-the-art
exhibits.
Other new exhibits include a
truck stop, an interactive water
exhibit, a hot air balloon and the 35
foot apple tree.
The museum has also improved
on some of the old favorites.
The single airplane has turned
into an entire airport, and the fire
truck has been spruced up.
The interactive water exhibit,
"Big Splash,” proved to be a popular
area for the weekend’s estimated
3,800 visitors.
David Palmer, a museum volun
teer, helped with the Big Splash
physics exhibit.
Palmer, who works for Isco, a
waste water treatment company, felt
right at home at Big Splash.
“This is right up my alley,” Palmer
"This is right up my
alley. I’m glad I ended
up in an area I actually
knew something about.”
David Palmer
museum volunteer
said. “I’m glad I ended up in an area I
actually knew something about.”
Palmer said he had been watch
ing the progress of the building of the
new Children’s Museum and was
impressed with the result.
“I saw the workers demolishing
the building and working on the new
museum,” Palmer said.
"I hoped whoever was designing
this thing knew what they were
doing.
“From what I’ve seen, it’s obvious
they did.”