ER physician turned artist to work with students on experimental exhibition

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Guest artist Dr. Dewey Blocksma will work with UT art students to develop work for the exhibit titled “Three-Dimensional Sketching — Repurpose on Purpose,” to be shown in the Center for the Visual Arts Gallery from Friday, Jan. 17, through Saturday, Jan. 25.

The imaginative Michigan artist and former emergency room physician will be at the Center for the Visual Arts on the University’s Toledo Museum of Art Campus to direct workshops using found and “repurposed” materials with UT art students. The evolving works that they collaboratively create during his visit, using the center’s gallery space as their working studio, will be on display through Jan. 25.

There will be a celebration and reception for the works produced during his residency in the Center for the Visual Arts Gallery Friday, Jan. 17, from 5 to 7 p.m.

Blocksma also will give a lecture about his work Wednesday, Jan. 15, at noon in the Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections in Carlson Library on Main Campus.

He earned a bachelor of science degree in chemistry from Wheaton College in Illinois and worked as an emergency room physician for 10 years after graduating from Northwestern University Medical School before making art his full-time career.

At a glance, Blocksma’s work is whimsical and witty.

“Blocksma’s direct and bold interaction with his materials belie the complexity of both their construction and their content. Politically savvy, deceptively simple, Blocksma’s art is engaging and unique,” said Barbara Miner, UT associate professor of art.

His paintings are moments out of his life, vignettes collected, nuances captured, according to the artist: “I use painting as a way to figure out what I’m trying to say, not as a way to explain what I’m thinking.”

For more information on the free, public exhibit, reception and lecture, contact Miner at barbara.miner@utoledo.edu or 419.530.8315.