In the public imagination, making good art requires two gifts: inspiration and talent. Inspiration is unpredictable and can strike at any time, so keep a sketchbook handy.
You never know when the light will fall perfectly on the face of a beautiful woman standing on a passing ferry, or when a bird, having lit on a branch, will tilt its head just so. Talent—well, you have it or you don’t. Some people are born artists.
That may or may not be true, but Alec Zemper, founder of Ghosthouse Fine Art Studio, knows one thing for sure: no one’s born knowing how to hold a paintbrush. Learning to paint—and draw, and sculpt, etc.—takes instruction, which these days can be increasingly cost-prohibitive.
Unable to afford college, Zemper moved from his hometown of Howell, MI to Long Island. He worked with his hands, maintaining and restoring traditional wooden sailboats. When time allowed, he studied the work of 19th-century painters in books, teaching himself to draw. Eventually he quit his work on sailboats and cast off into life as a painter. Convinced that untrained artists needed a more affordable option than college, he opened a studio in Oregon before moving back to Michigan; he now teaches Advanced Painting at Interlochen.
Ghosthouse Fine Art Studio, which Zemper owns and at which he, along with four other fine artists, teaches, demonstrates his ongoing commitment to affordability. Broadly, classes focus on drawing, painting, sculpture, and theory. Particular courses include Architectural Drawing & Perspective, Botanical Illustration, and Classical Figure Drawing, among others. Private and small group lessons are available by request.
As of this writing, a single session, such as an open life drawing event, costs as little as $20; an Advanced Drawing Techniques course, which runs three hours every Tuesday for eight weeks, costs $440. Given the small class sizes, the excellence of the instructors, and the opportunity for expert, personalized guidance, this represents a real bargain, especially as compared against the cost per credit hour of art colleges, which of necessity factor in significant administrative expenses. (Not incidentally, only 2% of graduates of art schools make their living as artists).
Materials are provided and no experience on the part of the student is required; classes are designated “Beginner,” “Intermediate,” and “Advanced” - and “Beginner” means exactly that. “I’ve taught students as young as nine,” Zemper said. “And I was teaching them French academic method. Those kids were learning things well beyond what students in college sometimes learn. Kids can do so much more than we give them credit for.” (Classes featuring nude life models are only for students 18 years old or older, or 16-17 with parental permission).
As an instructor, Zemper draws on traditional methods, methods that stretch back to Rembrandt and even earlier. “We use techniques the Egyptians used,” he said. Learning how to sit in your chair, how to hold your brush, how to stretch a canvas, how to select a frame: the goal of teaching the fundamentals isn’t to produce artists who produce indistinguishable art, but to teach them how to best get down on paper, or canvas, or in clay, what’s already in their heads.
It’s not a new approach. “People have had schools like this for hundreds of years,” he said. “But they started to die out in the 1920s.” The name, Ghosthouse: a joke, then, or an acknowledgment. “We’re building on the shoulders of people who are long gone.”
The results, some of which can be seen on the studio’s website, speak for themselves. Click “Student Work” and you’ll be taken to several impressive works, most of them representational. Take one: a girl in profile; she looks left against a blue background. She has long hair, neatly brushed, pulled taut behind her ear. It’s a striking painting. And not only is it the work of a student, it’s the work of a teenager. You have to scroll down further to reach the work of adult students, and you should: like the work of the teenagers, it displays imagination, atmosphere, and skill.
“Most people in our classes have never painted,” Zemper said. What they’ve since accomplished is remarkable, a world away from the fun but forgettable artwork churned out at, say, paint-and-sip parties. If that’s ping pong, this is tennis.
“Everybody can paint. Everyone should deepen their understanding of what beauty is. People can actually create objects of beauty. I mean that sincerely. It isn’t easy–it’s very difficult, in fact. But anyone can do it.”
That’s what Ghosthouse does: It gives you the tools to create those objects. It isn’t in the business of dictating atmosphere, or subject, or approach; if there’s a distinction to be made between art and craft, it’s craft that Ghosthouse teaches, while the students–through their life experiences, imagination, and daring–supply the art.
In a city that has often proclaimed its love for art while rarely demonstrating an understanding of what it takes to facilitate its creation, Ghosthouse is a welcome return to what matters.
Ghosthouse Fine Art Studio + Workshop
929 E. Fulton St., Grand Rapids
ghosthousegr.com
