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Story by Susan O'Connor, Photos By Dero Sanford

Take a walk through the Arkansas State University campus and exceptional people appear at every turn. Les Christensen is no exception. Director of the Fowler Center’s Bradbury Gallery since 2001, Christensen is a renowned artist in her own right.

Her art is a calling that began early in life. “The only thing I’ve ever wanted to be is an artist,” she said. “In high school — and even in junior high — I hung out in the art room.”

Christensen is a sculptor, using everyday materials to create contemporary art that says something about life. What each piece conveys to the patron varies greatly depending on that person’s memories and experiences.

“Contemporary art holds a mirror up to the viewer,” she said. “One piece can have different meanings to different people. I try to anticipate what those interpretations will be.”

One 2001 piece, titled World View, is a map of the world that is created through a mosaic of broken mirrors. It is massive, approximately 15 feet across, and took nine months of full-time work to complete.

While standing at one end of the work, Christensen said, viewers see pieces of their images reflected in other parts of the world. An interpretation of that experience could be that each individual’s actions affect the world in some way, whether it is an act of pollution or good will.

The work was on display at the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery in Miami, when a Los Angeles collector purchased it. The size of the piece was prohibitive to display in his home, so he donated it to the Fowler Museum at UCLA where he would be able to see it on a regular basis.

Other works by Christensen are currently on display at the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery.

Another work is “Flight of Servitude,” created in 2005. Christensen used stainless steel spoons, a symbol of drudgery, to create a graceful, exquisite set of wings.

Perhaps her favorite work, one that is not for sale, is a larger-than-life wedding dress made from a mosaic of broken white china plates that form intricate patterns of lace. It is simply titled “Happiest Day of Your Life.”

Christensen said the inspirations for her art often come to her as fully-formed ideas, sometimes even with a title.

“What I feel are the best pieces really come with no effort at all,” she said of the ideas. “They are just little gifts to you. Sometimes I look back and feel like, ‘Did I really do this?’ It’s almost like they created themselves.”

Christensen grew up in Omaha, Neb., and received her bachelor of fine arts from the University of Iowa. She spent a year of graduate school at the Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht in the Netherlands, then received her master of arts degree in sculpture from Arkansas State University.

She met her husband, John Salvest, at the University of Iowa. He teaches sculpture at ASU.

Her work has been recognized with several awards and grants including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Award in Sculpture and an Arkansas Arts Council Fellowship Award in Sculpture. She has exhibited her work in numerous venues across the U.S. and in Europe.

In January, she will direct the Delta National Small Prints Exhibition at the Fowler Center. Founded in 1996 by ASU art professor Evan Lindquist, the DNSPE is an important event for ASU. The exhibit begins Jan. 17 with an opening reception at 5 p.m. and runs through Feb. 17.

Occasions recently visited with Christensen to learn more about the upcoming exhibition:

OCCASIONS: How long have you directed the small prints exhibition?

LC: This will be my seventh installation. Professor Lindquist oversaw it the first two years and then Curtis Steele, the chair of the Department of Art, directed it for the following three years. Gayle Pendergrass, a professor of art at ASU, took over after the Bradbury Gallery was opened and it was moved to that location. I became involved later that year.

OCCASIONS: How do you decide which works will be in the show?

LC: Actually, we don’t make any of those decisions. Artists from across the country enter the competition, which is then chosen by a nationally known expert in the field of printmaking. The person who makes the selections is called a juror. They also determine which works receive prizes, including purchase prizes, scholarships and merit awards.

OCCASIONS: Who is the juror this year?

LC: We asked Marjorie Devon, the director of the renowned Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to make the selections for 2008. She mentioned to me that she felt that, overall, the prints submitted this year were of very high quality, which I am sure made her job all the more challenging. There are always so many talented artists whose work cannot be included because of space limitations. Hopefully, they will enter again when another juror can review their work.

OCCASIONS: How is the juror selected each year?

LC: We try to vary our jurors as much as possible. Our goal each year is to find someone from a different part of the country with a different approach to printmaking than we had the previous year. So for example, if one year we have a curator from a museum on the east coast, the next year we would look for a director of a printmaking press in the center of the country, and so on.

OCCASIONS: How has the Delta National Small Prints Exhibition changed and grown over time?

LC: That’s a good question. As with any program, over time things do change. The move to the Bradbury Gallery in the Fowler Center was one. Previously it had been held in the ASU Fine Arts Center Gallery, but the new facility is much larger. The exhibition requires a lot of space to be processed properly so it was a logical decision.
After the move, the next change we made was to frame all the prints for the exhibition. That was a big improvement and I have to thank the university for making that possible.
Last year, we made another change. Originally, only prints that could fit into a 16 by 20-inch mat were allowed. We wanted to continue with the small print format, but we had had so many requests for a larger option that we decided to offer three sizes, rather than just one. We added a 20 by 24- inch size, but limited the largest to a maximum of 24 by 30 inches to retain the small print range.

OCCASIONS: What does it take to put together a show of this magnitude?

LC: Several dedicated people! It really is a group effort and I cannot thank everyone enough. As is true of any project, it is the details that make the difference, so honestly it would take an entire page for me to mention everyone involved. Along with the most obvious, the talented artists and the normal exhibition tasks, we also produce a full color catalog. Of course, there is also the need for funding. We are so fortunate to have a community that recognizes the value of this exhibition. We really have a supportive group of people – here at the university and in the community. Their efforts allow the Delta National Small Prints Exhibition to be one of the foremost, annually held, national print competitions.