GRANT LUND: 'EDUCATION IS MORE THAN GERBILS'

Dr. Grant Lund painted a mural of Stephen Hawking which is displayed at the Rhodes Hall of Science at Southeast Missouri State University.

A job he took as a young man gives a sense of how badly Dr. Grant Lund wanted to become an artist.

To earn money for school, he mixed chicken guts, cow tripe, dried eggs and fresh horse meat into a concoction that became mink food.

"Every time I took a shovel of chicken guts I said, `One for me, one for school,'" he said.

Lund got his bachelor's and master of fine arts degrees from Brigham Young University and eventually a doctorate from Penn State. He has taught art at Southeast Missouri State University since 1971 and is retiring this month.

During his tenure at Southeast, Lund built a reputation for personal conservatism and professional independence.

He is known for his "Dome Series" prints, which in one way or another incorporate the dome at Academic Hall.

"Education is More Than Gerbils" is the title of one print which depicts the dome as a water bowl for tiny animals spinning on a wheel.

Part of the inspiration was a frustrating day Lund spent trying to help a talented young prospective student get enrollment and scholarship information at the university. "After going to six places we were sent to the library to research the information," he said.

Another part was hearing an administrator say "Creativity is just an art thing."

He strongly disagrees.

One advantage of art is that it is a form of play, Lund says. "It is a non-threatening way to explore the big cosmos relationships."

A Mormon, Lund quotes Quaker Parker Palmer: "Education is making a space in which truth can be practiced."

"You really start to learn when you start to be intellectually honest with yourself," Lund says.

"I don't care whether my art sells in galleries or I become famous. I do care that students have a tremendous sense of what art is about and what life is about."

He has written two unpublished manuscripts: "Christ and the Creative Individual" and the 450-page "Art and Human Needs."

Lund often gladly has challenged institutionalized thinking.

He has refused to participate in the merit-pay system at the university. "I thought it was a tool for manipulation," he said.

He has never submitted the substantiation required of professors under the system.

"I have a tendency to be kind of individualistic," he says, smiling broadly.

Before coming to Southeast, one of Lund's first jobs was teaching grades 3-12 in an isolated Utah town of 1,800 where the superintendent spent the art budget on bows and arrows. Lund dug clay for his ceramics class at the graveyard.

He started the art department at a new junior college in New Mexico. He left when a professor who was a good friend was fired for publicly criticizing a state legislator.

In the late 1970s, Lund and student Anne Rowe founded The Drawing Group, a collection of area artists who still get together to draw the human figure. At the time, nudes were not allowed on the Southeast campus, so Rowe got the Sikeston public schools to sponsor the group.

Seven of the nine original members went on to become professional artists. Rowe is now a portrait artist in Kansas City.

There were times Lund tried to leave Southeast. "I have been fairly outspoken, particularly if I think it's to the advantage of the students," he said.

He claims a good rapport with students who are serious about art and not much empathy with students who view art as a job.

Lund and his wife, Marcia, have seven children.

"One of the main reasons we stayed was it was a great place for the kids."

He was primarily known as a printmaker through most of his career at Southeast, but in the past few years he was commissioned to paint a William Faulkner mural in Kent Library and a Steven Hawking mural at the science building.

The Lunds and a young daughter still at home will move to Logan, Utah, this summer. He plans to polish his second manuscript for a publisher who is interested. Some illustration work is in his future, and he wants to paint a series of portraits of Christ.

Portraits of Christ tend to show a light shining from above or from the side onto his face, Lund says. He wants to paint a series in which Christ shines from within.

"I think that one will challenge me quite awhile," he says.

"I'm not retiring. I'm retreading."