Irving Zane Taran’s retrospective selection of art is enjoying its last exhibit at Hankins Gallery.
Taran’s paintings from the 1960s and 1970s are slowly being sold, so when the exhibit ends in mid-November, his early work will be unavailable for display.
“We won’t do a show that traverses this much time and space again,” he said.
What remains for this exhibition are selections that in 1997 hung in the walls of the Midland Center for the Arts along with a Mark Rothko exhibit.
Part of his success, he says, can be attributed to the atmosphere of East Lansing and MSU.
“This is my community,” he said. “I love every minute that I continue to be here.”
Taran, a studio art professor, has been teaching at MSU for 38 years and says the university has been good to him. The paintings exhibited at Hankins Gallery, which is located in the Marriot hotel at University Place, 300 M.A.C Ave., all come from those years.
Always interested in geology, Taran came to a compromise between art and science - science-inspired art.
Pointing to a painting on the wall, he tells the story of musing over a very small section of a glacier.
“I saw something in there and I abstracted it,” he said. “I was always fascinated with the earth sciences as a college student.”
The earth is more solid and tangible than other fields, he said. He finds zoology and botany interesting, but they have too much theory. Classes and orders lack something that rocks and plants offer.
For Taran, it’s important to have his students see he is active in creating art, besides just teaching about it.
“If he’s teaching the stuff, I want to see what he really does,” studio art sophomore Eric Martin said. “Anybody can just read out of a book.”
Taran said it’s important to show students what the art world is like and he takes his students very seriously.
“It’s a model for how you’re going to be,” he said. “In our department, we believe in teaching from the freshman level to the graduate level.”
Bill Hankins, owner of the gallery, said he’s excited to host Taran’s work - for the fifth time.
“It’s very high quality,” he said. “He has a sense of form, design, color and ability.
“You look at these paintings and they have a physical energy as well as an artistic energy.”
All of Taran’s work created within the last year uses heavy acrylic paints, many that shine with reflected colors. Swaths of paint bulge out from their frames.
“I like the physicality of playing with all the different elements,” he said.
To house the exhibit, Hankins rented out the adjacent space, which has been vacant for several years. The walls and floors had to be painted to make the space presentable.
“I’ve been working on this for 12 days straight and every time I come in here I get charged,” Hankins said. “In these troubled times we’re going through, we have to find solace in art - it feeds the soul.”
