Painting students in the Department of Art and Art History created works last spring for the new offices of the Woods Charitable Foundation in Lincoln.
“Since I’ve been here, I’ve always tried to find ways of getting outside of the classroom and of the department. Almost every year we’ve been able to create an event where student actually have work that’s shown or done outside of the classroom,” said Associate Professor of Art Aaron Holz. “It was a really successful project and a good experience for the students. I think it gave them a lot of credibility and trust.”
Holz, along with Assistant Professor of Art Matthew Sontheimer, had both beginning and advanced painting students meet with Thomas C. Woods, IV, the President and Board Secretary of the Woods Charitable Foundation, to set up the project.
“We were relocating our offices,” Woods said. “We hadn’t moved out of the telephone building since we were founded in 1941, and we really didn’t have any artwork to speak of, except for one existing piece done by a student back in the early 1960’s.”
The Woods Charitable Fund is a private philanthropic foundation created in 1941 by Frank H. Woods and Nelle Cochrane Woods and their three sons. Their business interests in telecommunications, including Lincoln Telephone & Telegraph, as well as the coal industries in Nebraska and Illinois, helped create the resources for the Fund.
The Woods Foundation wanted to honor their roots with the telephone company through the artwork in their new offices at 1248 O St Ste 1130 in Lincoln. Students visited the Frank H. Woods Telephone Pioneer Museum and studied Woods Charitable Fund Annual Reports before creating their pieces.
“As a class we visited the telephone museum, and the students took pictures of various exhibited objects and installations in the museum,” Sontheimer said. “I talked with each student about the subject they were painting and what would be a good scale to work on.”
The students created around 20 works, and the Woods Charitable Fund Board selected the pieces they wanted to purchase for their offices.
“The Woods Family has a great history of art collecting, and Tom has a great eye,” Holz said. “They weren’t just going to take anything. They had to be good, and some of the works that were made were just really fantastic.”
Six pieces were selected for the Foundation’s offices. A seventh piece created by Susan Kachman was purchased privately by a Woods Fund employee. Students negotiated the purchase price with the Woods Fund.
“I thought was important for them to figure out how to have that conversation and represent themselves,” Holz said. “I told Tom ahead of time it had to be a learning experience.”
The subjects of the pieces were varied. One student created a piece that depicted two children communicating through a string and tin cans in the old “telephone” game. Another was a painting of seven hats hanging on a hat rack, and each one has a different logo from Lincoln Telephone all the way to Windstream. Another painting shows the detail of a telephone.
“The history of the telephone exists in each of those paintings in a very strong and memorable way,” Holz said.
Woods said they were pleased with the artwork that now hangs in their offices.
“We were really impressed, especially with the pieces we selected,” Woods said. “I’ve had people come through and say, ‘Oh, is that a so-and-so’s piece?’ And I said, no, it’s a UNL art student. Maybe one day they’ll be so-and-so. You never know. But it was nice seeing the different subject matter, the scale of the work and the medium used.”
Andrea Maack, of Lincoln, who graduated in May with her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, had her painting of a pay phone selected by the Woods Fund.
“This was such a great opportunity for us students,” Maack said. “In the advanced class, we weren’t assigned to paint this commission, but instead were given the option to pursue it. Knowing we had the full support from our professor to take a small tangent from our work and do something completely different made me jump at the opportunity.”
Maack said she did not know a lot about the Foundation before working on this project.
“I didn’t know much about the Woods Foundation except it was a very established company and also a very generous one,” Maack said. “You hear the name Woods all over town.”
She chose to paint a pay phone after reviewing photos she took at the telephone museum.
“In my own personal work, I tend to use dramatic lighting with normally very dark backgrounds and some cropping of the image, so when I went back through my photos and saw the picture of the pay phone carefully lit in this phone booth, it had many elements that intrigued me,” Maack said. “I loved how the light reflected off the metal back of the booth onto the black, shiny phone. All around it was just an interesting photograph to begin with, and I knew it would be even better as a painting.”
Bonnie Ostdiek created “Progression,” the painting of the seven caps depicting the historical logos of Lincoln telephone companies.
“Visiting the museum with our painting class started me thinking about a topic that would be different than the usual painting of mechanisms I was sure would be in the other painter’s minds,” Ostdiek said. “I noticed the row of baseball caps hanging at the ceiling with the logos of the various telecommunications companies, and decided to give a history by the various logos over time.”
Ostdiek was honored to have her piece chosen. A non-traditional student, she was painting for the first time in 35 years.
“I am honored to have one of my works on permanent display at the Woods Foundation,” Ostdiek said. “Having been away from painting for so long, it renewed my faith in my abilities. As a senior citizen, the reality and the good news is that creativity doesn’t disappear because one is older and remains to break out if given the chance. The art department, and especially Aaron Holz, gave me the opportunity to fulfill a yearning long put aside.”
Commissioning is an important experience for students to have.
“I feel the process of commissioning a piece is something every artist should experience,” Maack said. “It’s a thrill and a risk all at the same time. You never know who will like your work because every eye sees art different, but knowing that someone really values your work and wants to purchase it, that is a great feeling.”
The other students whose works were purchased were Carl Jernberg, Kyle Choy, Vilis Lipins and Shereen Zangeneh.
“I think the paintings look wonderful in the space,” Sontheimer said. “After visiting the offices, Aaron and I both though they works looked great and were really thoughtfully installed.”
Maack is glad she had the opportunity to participate in the project because it gave her confidence in her work.
“It obviously benefited me by selling the work, but I think it also just gave me that extra push to know that I would be able to do commissioned work in the future,” Maack said. “It’s so exciting knowing that someone will see my painting every day in this building, and that there will be many new eyes who will get to see it also. The Woods Foundation has been generous in giving us this opportunity, and I think as students we have a further understanding in the process of commissioned work.”