In an old repair shop in Banbury Place, Anders C. Shafer, an artist and former UW-Eau Claire art professor, has a studio filled to the brim with paintings, frames, sketches and brushes.

Shafer was recently the subject of an exhibition at the Ruth Foster Art Gallery titled “Meter & Medium: A Visual Festschrift of Anders C. Shafer.” In addition to showcasing Shafer’s work, the exhibit, curated by Anna Zook, also featured the art of his students, demonstrating Shafer’s contribution to the present and future of art since the beginning of his tenure as a professor in 1968. 

“It was wonderful,” Shafer said. “I was pleased that they have done so well in life, and it only scratches the surface.”

The artists featured in the exhibit shared their experiences with Shafer in panels alongside their pieces. The panels also described the artists’ illustrious careers, which range from popular comics to musically inspired sculpture. 

Shafer said that he believed in the potential for imagination in each student, and strived to create a welcoming educational environment to share rather than creativity.

“All of the students in that show … had become professional artists and have done very well in their careers, so it was very pleasing to talk to them,” Shafer said. 

Shafer said that artists like his students can overcome technological pressures. 

“They are still making art,” Shafer said. “So, I hope they can keep art alive.”

He said that this deliberate form of artistic creation was one of the points of the show, as well as displaying what “pencil and paint come up with” when an artist sits down to work thoughtfully. 

Shafer’s own art is often sequential and features hand-cut frames that he crafts himself. Additionally, a love for the Dutch masters is apparent in the content of his paintings, particularly the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, who is the subject of “The Fantastic Journey of Pieter Bruegel,” an illustrated book by Shafer. 

“I was interested in Bruegel when I was a little boy because my parents had a book of prints,” Shafer said. “They were all very imaginative. Pictures of monsters and weird stories and proverbs.”

The technical innovation of Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” and the works of Caravaggio were also influences, said Shafer. 

Shafer’s fascination with Bruegel — particularly the painting “Dull Gret,” also known as “Mad Meg” — is one example of his fascination with the relationship between visual art and words. 

Shafer has also authored and illustrated several books, among them “Poems, Written and Painted,” in which he wrote the poems and created the art, and “Mother Nature’s Apron,”which was written by his daughter, Ariel Shafer, and illustrated by Shafer. 

“A process I use making paintings is making things up using my intuition, using suggestion, dreaming about things,” Shafer said. “It is somewhere between paintings and poems. And that was the idea, that the poems and the paintings don’t really have the same subject matter, but they relate to the same way of thinking.”

Shafer said that when he first began experimenting seriously with the technique of sequential art in the 1980s, he thought this was a modern art form. However, Shafer said he was surprised at something he stumbled upon in his reading. 

Shafer said he learned that sequential art is the oldest known form of communication, excluding speech. He said that this form has the ability to include a multitude of ideas.

“That’s why I do these, I think, is to combine all these different ideas you get when you look at anything,” Shafer said. “You don’t just see the thing, you see the culture, the history, lots of things like that.” 

Shafer said the origin of one of his other signatures: hand-cut painted frames, which are often embellished with painting and writing. 

Shafer said that he had often been displeased with frames that disrupt the aesthetic of an artwork and said that after seeing a modernist painting in a baroque frame, he came up with the idea of customizing the frame, thereby extending the artwork into its structure. 

Original thought and innovation is at the heart of Shafer’s work and educational philosophy. He discussed the future of art amidst the rise of new technologies, in particular artificial intelligence. 

Shafer, informed by his profound understanding of art history, said that while individual mediums may suffer for a time, the future of art is hopeful because of the power of imagination. 

“You can use your mind and your hands and your experience, imagination, memories, to make art,” Shafer said. “You don’t need to use artificial intelligence. You can use your imagination.”

Crist can be reached at [email protected].