Four Decades, Three Friends

Kellogg Community College is exhibiting the work of three regional artists who have been friends for more than four decades on campus through the end of March.

The exhibit, titled “Four Decades, Three Friends: The Art of Honore Lee, Karen French & Mary Whalen,” opened Feb. 20 and will run through Thursday, March 30, in the Eleanor R. and Robert A. DeVries Gallery of the Davidson Visual and Performing Arts Center, on campus at 450 North Ave. in Battle Creek. It consists of more than 50 works of art spanning mediums including ceramics, paint, print and multimedia, covering a wide variety of subjects.

The show is free and open to the public during regular gallery business hours, which are 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays and 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays.

A DeVries Lecture Series Presentation about the exhibit – also free and open to the public – will be held with the artists from 3 to 4 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 23, in the Davidson Auditorium, followed by an opening reception in the gallery from 4 to 6 p.m.

For more information about the exhibit or other KCC arts events and initiatives, contact KCC’s Arts and Communication Office at 269-965-4126.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Karen French, of Kalamazoo, earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Ceramics from Western Michigan University in 1976, later adding a teaching certificate that led to 30 years of teaching art. French became a full-time elementary art teacher at Portage Public Schools in 1996 and has been working in Aesthetic Education since the early 1990s. She was awarded an Excellence in Education Award from the Kalamazoo Regional Educational Service Agency (KRESA) in 2018, near her retirement. Throughout her career she has continued to make art, participate in exhibitions and enter competitions.

Honore Lee, of Grand Haven, is coordinator of the Aesthetic Education program for the Muskegon Area ISD and an Art History instructor at Muskegon Community College. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art at Western Michigan University in 1994 and has a long history in facilitating art education, including at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts and KRESA’s Education for the Arts Aesthetic Education Program. A member of the Southwest Michigan Printmakers guild, Lee has received many honors and awards for her work, including a 2015 Kalamazoo Artistic Development Initiative grant from the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo. Her work has been included in galleries throughout the U.S. and is a part of numerous private collections.

Photography and arts educator Mary Whalen, of Kalamazoo, is chair of the Photography and Digital Media Program at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts and a teaching artist in KRESA’s Education for the Arts Aesthetic Education Program. Her work has appeared in many publications and in a variety of exhibits.