Unveiling the Legacy

by Daniel Granias

Endless lists could be written when choosing redeemable qualities of an educational institution. Two characteristics that stand out among that list are prestige and legacy. Why is this a notable institution and what about it makes it notable? How long has this program existed, and to what extent has it changed through history? Since the University of Iowa began the country’s first M.F.A. program in art over sixty years ago, it has accumulated a collection of works (required to be) donated to the school by every M.F.A. Alumnus upon completing the program. Today this collection exists as a precious shadow of our past, hidden in the dusty basement of an abandoned apartment building located at the University of Iowa’s Oakdale campus.

At first glance, the facilities for the Thesis Gallery Collection seem…abysmal. Submerged in what used to be the basement apartment of a slowly deteriorating brick complex, the storage room feels painfully claustrophobic from the stillness of the air as paintings stuff and stack the surrounding shelves and central tables. The windows are covered with yellowing paper, adding to the stale twinge of the warm fluorescent lights and damp odor of creeping mold and mildew. Many of the paintings’ frames (for those that have them) are chipped, warped, or broken; the paintings themselves are faded by time and dust. This environment seems only appropriate for such a place to exist as a suspension of time—a land of limbo—the waiting room where painting #1957.28 waits either to be hung in some administrator’s office or to remain on the shelf, perhaps to be used by future art restoration students.

Though it is hard to tell, there is in fact movement in these depths. Patrick Ellis has been improving and maintaining the Thesis Gallery Collection since June of 2004 after a six-month vacancy period during which the building functioned solely as a drop-off storage location. Upon receiving the position, Ellis had little knowledge of the collection’s former caretaker and was simply told to “take care of it.” Ellis took on the challenge and has made a tremendous effort at making the position his own. He has created a functioning business and continues to document piles of work and slowly but surely preserves the collection as an archive of the University’s own art history.

Considering his background in working with art, it is no wonder why Ellis says, though slightly embarrassed, that he is “bred for the job.” Ellis grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, and received his undergraduate painting degree at Arizona State, which may contribute some explanation as to why his office feels like an adobe desert hut. He then received his graduate degree in painting at the University of Iowa. Ellis has also worked in various framing and art handling companies including Claim to Frame in Iowa City since 1979. He even worked part time in framing and art handling while growing up in Arizona. From 1989-1995, Ellis performed technical installation and shipping for the University of Iowa’s Museum of Art.

Unfortunately, there are little to no connections between the UIMA and the Thesis Gallery collection, which is partially due to the collection’s specific domain of alumni works. However, Ellis enjoys the freedom and says that he prefers to have control over the collection instead of having too many people in a situation where “the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.”

As much as Ellis enjoys working on his own, he appreciates support at the Thesis Collection. UI graduate painting student Mariah Dekkenga has assisted Ellis as a student employee in the past and contributed significantly to improving the order of the collection. Ellis would like to improve the collection’s visibility to more students at the university and to have classes visit and study the collection. He also encourages studio art students to learn framing and documenting work as skills additionally quintessential to working as an artist.

By working with the collection, Ellis has gained a convincing sense of the way the art program at the University of Iowa has functioned and changed over the better part of the century, revealing remarkably noticeable trends in art and art education throughout the decades. Some work in the collection clearly follows the trends of American icons such as Grant Wood and Philip Gustin, while other work, Ellis says, follows trends set by professors at the U of I such as Mauricio Lasansky, who first established the printing department at the university in 1945, was titled as the Virgil M. Hancher Distinguished Professor of Art in 1967 and taught until the mid 80s. Other work that has graced the shelves of the collection includes that of Miriam Shapiro, distinguished alum who received her M.F.A. in 1949 and continued to become a leading scholar in art history and renowned female artist for over thirty years.

Only time can and has created the Thesis Gallery Collection. Not only does it exist as an archive of paintings, it unfolds layers of narratives that can be read throughout the history of twentieth century North America and the University of Iowa. Two high shelves in a back room of Ellis’s office hold nothing but rolled canvases of paintings that were damaged when the Iowa City campus flooded in 1993. Wooden boxes and drawers hold hundreds of loose drawings and prints that have yet to be identified and framed. Only traces of glue remain on a large multimedia piece that once held eighteen unknown hourglass-shaped objects. Yet they all remain in the collection with the hopes that somebody will eventually discover their creator, year, purpose, et cetera, should the funds and techniques become available to restore them to an acceptable state. But for now, the only revenue for the Thesis Gallery Collection is a $35 annual fee available to all University of Iowa offices to rent and exchange pieces as they desire.