Delbert Michel
Delbert Michel, Professor Emeritus of Art at Hope College, lives in Traverse City, Michigan, where he is in his seventh decade of making art.
Message
Delbert Michel has been a practicing artist for fifty years. His career, following graduate school and an MFA degree from University of Iowa, began in 1964 as an instructor of art at Hope College, in Holland, Michigan, where he developed the school's art department to offer a major, and oversaw its becoming a respected, accredited department that has produced many fine artists. During those years, while achieving full professorship, and twice leading the department as Chair, he carried on an active artistic life, exhibiting both nationally and internationally.
Michel has participated in competitive and invitational exhibitions throughout the U.S. including New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, San Diego, New Orleans and San Francisco and has won many prizes. He has been selected for seven international exhibitions. His numerous one-man shows include: Toledo Art Museum, University of Michigan, Indiana University, Muskegon Museum of Art, Grand Rapids Art Museum, Dennos Museum, Museum of Fine Art of Queretaro, Mexico, Galerie Groeneveld, Almelo The Netherlands, Croydon College of Art, London, England, Portsmouth College of Art, Portsmouth, England. He is represented in many private, corporate, university and museum collections throughout the U.S., Europe and Mexico.
Michel's studio is in Traverse City, Michigan, where he resides with his wife, Sally, and continues an active life of art and travel.
Statement
My world is one of lyrical images — drawn, etched, painted, shaped, cut fragmented, assembled and discovered in the spontaneous process of making art.
These images celebrate the beauty and energy I experience in nature, alive with dynamic change... landscape patterns shaped by natural forces such as wind, climate, quality of light and atmosphere. They celebrate my fascination with distant and past cultures, discovered through travel and revealed in fragments of architecture and artifacts, allowing me to make connections with my own particular visual sensibility through the patina of time.