Check out next time through Kansas

I'll be going to Lindsborg the next time I drive. I need to visit the Birger Sandzen Memorial Gallery in Little Sweden USA. Birger Sandzen painted gorgeous, exuberant landscapes and created block prints of great vitality.

This Swedish painter came to the campus of Bethany College in Lindsborg in 1894 at the age of twenty-three to teach art, art history, French, and to sing tenor while assisting the vocal music classes. Although he exhibited extensively and was offered other positions, he loved Lindsborg and lived there until 1954.

I've had many years to enjoy two of Sandzen's large, vibrant oil paintings, "At the Timberline", and "Mountain Lakes" at the Highland Park Library here in the Dallas area. Ten of his lithographs are also on display in the upstairs Reference Room. Several of the lithographs remind me of my hikes, campsites, and attempts to draw in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The works urge me to put on hiking boots and a backpack and breathe in! The brush strokes suggest the power of geologic forces, while the colors bring the tension of ice melting on a mountain pond. It's partly the cobalt violet, of course.

Sandzen's landscapes are probably from Estes Park and Colorado Springs, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico, not South Dakota. He taught summer classes at the Broadmoor Art Academy in Colorado. In mid-1930s, as part of the Federal W.P.A. program, Sandzen painted post office murals for Lindsborg, Halstead and Belleville, Kansas. I'll try to visit the post offices too, next time.

The Sandzen art was presented to the Highland Park Society of Arts in 1926 by Mr. and Mrs. E. T. Moore. The Society had a gallery in the Highland Park Town Hall. After the Society disbanded, its art collection became part of the Highland Park Library.

On school photo day, several of the students dressed up in their Sunday best. "I like your bow tie," one five year old told another. "It's not a bow time," he responded, "it's a next time."
© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder