Bruce continues his conversation with the versatile Jack Bergeron, discussing Bergeron's time at Lansing Community College, the changing landscape of contemporary art, exploring his musical side, and his unique methods for bringing art to life.

You're listening to Art Happens Here, the podcast that explores the often curious and occasionally amazing art installations on, in and around the campuses of Lansing Community College. I'm your host, Bruce Mackley.

Well, we are back here with Mr. Jack Bergeron.

He was a local legend in the arts scene and esteemed faculty member and more here at Lansing Community College. Welcome back, Jack.

Thanks. Glad to be back again.

Yeah, this is great. It's awesome.

I think we were talking about your post grad seasons coming out of college and what you faced then, and it's very intriguing and it's a little challenging for those who are not in the industry to understand the gap between traditional art and digital art and teaching art a certain way and going into this whole new realm. I mean, you can compare the, this current thing with AI. I think back to those days, just that lack of knowledge moving forward.

Oh, yeah, people were very afraid that the computer was going to take their job and it really just, I guess, got them to work more.

I don't.

I don't know. But yeah, I remember that. Yeah, people are very afraid.

Yeah. Yeah.

When the computers came into the art program, graphic design was the first discipline to get computers. And then it became illustration.

Yeah. And then using a mouse before the stylus came out right, there was this popular misconception. Alvin Toffler, Future Shock.

This book from a long time ago, back when the microwave was brought to. The microwave oven, was brought to retail, was brought into people's homes.

It had been around for a while, but they did this thing and the promise was you're only going to work 20 hours a week. Now this is going to free up so much time. All it means is you're going to be jamming more work into the time you have.

It just means you can do more.

Yeah.

Because if you can be faster, you can do more of it in hours or 50 or 60, however many.

Yeah, cram it in there, monetize it. You know, that whole thing, that balance between the fine art world and the commercial art world. It's a little blurry to this day.

Yeah. When I taught computer graphics, that's another class I took at LCC. As soon as I could. They taught it one semester and I took it the next.

Yeah.

And so I ended up teaching some.

What year would this have been?

87. Okay, 88.

87.

88. We were teaching DOS.

DOS, DOS commands disk operating System for

those that don't know DOS too. Because you had to format you had to format your five and a quarter inch floppy disk.

Absolutely. High tech. The highest tech. Were you ever, like on the. On the phone with Microsoft at 1am doing, you know, hardware handshaking and stuff like that?

That missed out on that.

I wasn't. Yeah, yeah, no, we had. We had a really excellent full time faculty member there who was into computers. And so she was the force behind it.

Well, it's. I gotta think then, based on that.

What you just said was this place has always been sort of forward thinking and in staying on top of relevancy, you know, relevancy in whatever career path you have.

I think so.

I mean, one of my capacities here at LCC was in administration, so I used to get a lot of data, and the data was showing that transfer students from LCC to MSU were doing better than the native students who started at MSU.

Really?

And because LCCs, smaller class sizes, personal attention and equipment that endures and equipment.

I've had peers from MSU stop by and they're blown away. They're like, I can't believe we don't get what you guys get.

Right, right.

That's the truth.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm sure. Well, when we met, I've been here about 26 years and I think I was a few years in.

You were the quintessential college professor in your tweed jacket with the elbow patches and the distinguished beard. Gray, you know, and you're taller. And you commanded. I mean, I remember you commanded a lot of respect up there. You started at adjunct.

I believe you probably went to full time.

Went to full time in 86 after nine years.

Yep. Yeah. And then from there you were the department chair.

Did he?

He created the careers division and the arts division. I think career.

Anyway, I was in careers, so before that, almost every program had a program director of some sort, an administrator, and he wanted to flatten the organization, so he created academic team leaders. And so I became an academic team leader.

I see.

Basically because nobody else in the. No other full time in the art program wanted to deal with administration.

Yeah. Well, no, it comes with a cost. I mean, it does. Think higher up you go.

Well, air's thin at the top and, you know, the accountability and the decision making, especially under. You know, I always thought, why isn't there a model for community college administrative system? Some kind of hierarchy, some kind of org.

They're all different. They are.

They're all different.

Yeah, they are. Yeah. How many years did you do that?

Academic team leader was from I became a. A department chair in 96. I think I did it for six years, seven years. Yeah, something like that. And then I became a department chair.

Right? Yeah. You even served as interim provost for a while, I believe.

I did at the very end.

Yeah. I remember we were doing. Maybe it was a kickoff thing, and you stood up and you were students first.

I mean, you were all about priorities being centered around.

Well, that's because I think I kept teaching. I didn't want to be the administrator who maybe started out teaching and then forgot what it was like to teach. Because students change. Things change.

Technology makes it change. I love teaching until everybody had a cell phone. Then I hated teaching, really. I just didn't want to teach anymore.

That stands to reason. That's what I've heard. And that was a weird statement I just made. Students first. But of course, you work at a college. Of course. Students.

Well, the thing is, you get to certain areas, certain levels, and you can get walled off from the paying customer. And that's what they're all about. Paying customer students. And.

Well, they're both. I don't think it's an either or. They can be both. They're both students and there are customers.

That's true.

I never understood why. Why that had to be one or the other.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I often thought, you know, misguided or not, that our product was not education.

Our product is educated people, and that's what comes out of here. You know, highly educated people who are job ready. And anyway, I could go on and on as a marketing guy. I want to get into your.

Some of the welding and some of the sculpture that I've seen you and I did. We did an exhibition at Mica together with Denny. Some of those items, again, daring. They had your style stamped all over them. Beautiful.

I mean, graceful, aesthetically pleasing. That was a realm that you occupied for a while.

Yeah.

Again, I guess, having started out always being concerned about wasting money, spending too much money, I started going to the scrap yards looking for shapes that were interesting. This was before Scrap Fest, just way before, just to be clear.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I started doing these pieces. I did two exhibitions of kind of wall sculptures I don't remember was mine. One with you and me.

One was freestanding.

Yeah. Okay. So I did some wall sculpture pieces with plastic and steel, and then I got into some floor pieces, larger pieces,

and then

I said, well, maybe I should add some lights to these or something. So I thought, well, I could maybe get a market for some kind of industrial lights. Well, they Didn't I, didn't. I sold a few.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah.

I've only tried to show enlancing.

Yeah. It requires a lot more than now, just the inquisitiveness and creativity and, you know, fearlessness surrounding your work.

But you know, like artists these days, you got to be a. Become a marketer. You know, if you want to flourish, you have to be a business minded. Wear all these hats. It's. It's a different.

I think it's a different game now.

Yeah, I really do. I was in it when I was.

Yeah, yeah. So you probably. I can kind of identify with this.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm struck with the notion that you probably, you had in your mind what you wanted to do, but you didn't know how to do it directly. So you just plowed your way through it and you learned how to do it as you went and then you became good at it.

Yeah. My experience being a part timer and always wanting to make sure I could support myself, I don't say no to a lot of things.

I mean, I say, well, yeah, I can do it. If I can't, well, I'll get close. And that's how I've always approached everything. You said, kind of a rebirth or something.

Yeah, renewal.

Renewal. That's kind of how I see things. There's always an opportunity to try something new.

Yeah.

And if you, you've seen my portfolio. I mean, I don't really stick with the same thing.

No, you. And I don't know if it's boredom or just an adventuresome spirit. Maybe both.

Probably.

Probably both. No. I remember I mentioned earlier the quintessential professor with a tweed jacket, you know, and you expect it.

You probably didn't have a pipe, but you know, it would, it wouldn't. You know, you'd fit right in there.

Your polished shoes and, you know, all of this and then, you know, a year or two later you're going down the road on a Harley and you. These arms that are all inked up and you just reinvented yourself. You just decided to do that one day and that's the space that you're in right now.

I've seen pictures of your musician when

Right.

It was a tenor saxophone.

I heard it.

Yeah, yeah, it's a tenor saxoph. So I wanted to play tenor Saxophone in a rock and roll band. I was 10. And so I took this class in the summer with seven other students.

I was the only tenor. And everybody else had an alto, which is a smaller. And the instructor wasn't paying attention. He didn't realize I had a tenor.

I don't know why he didn't. He had me learn from the alto book and then said, well, we got a concert next week.

You're gonna have to forget what you learned the last six weeks and do this. And I quit. And it bothered me. It bothered me that I quit playing the saxophone.

But you enjoyed it then, right?

Yeah, I didn't get a lot.

Was it the expectations?

I just didn't want to have to start over again. And. And I'm sure my parents were probably not thrilled with what I was doing.

Yeah.

So anyway, so I quit.

So you rebel.

You so. So when I got 35, I still wasn't a full timer here at LCC, but I was making enough classes and the other kind of side jobs.

I decided I wanted to try it again, see if I could play it. So I couldn't play in the apartment I had. So that actually is why I bought my first house, so I could practice saxophone in my house.

Rock and roll.

Rock and roll. And I've been taking lessons off and on ever since. I'm taking lessons again now.

That's incredible. I often refer to music as the truest form of art. Right or wrong. It's a universal. You know, it's just. It is.

I love it. The thing I love best about music, except when you're recording, is that it's gone. You play it, it's experience, and it's gone.

Whenever you make something, you've got the product there to look at and to analyze and to. There's some good parts of that, but you just have all this stuff afterwards. I just like. The music is just. It's an experience.

Just flows right through. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's a type of art that's come around.

I know you've seen these things where somebody will take a dusty back window, a car, and they'll take their fingertip and they'll do the Mona Lisa on it. The temporariness is part of the beauty of it. It's like a sandcastle. Artwork.

It lends to the fascination of the beauty with it and the artist's willingness to do this and to have it vanish. Everything's temporary, though, when it comes down to it, really, isn't it?

Yeah, it's all temporary.

Yeah.

Bronze lasts A long time.

Bronze. Yeah, bronze. Boy, all these realms. I just. Too intimidating for me.

I've often wanted to get into all these different things and I just fear, I mean, I just come up short that in just the amount of time,

it's a really time consuming process. You and I talked before about you saying you kind of like to lay things out, you know, sort of.

Yeah.

And that's what sculpture. Sculpture is very processed. You know, most when you get sculptors together, they don't talk about the aesthetics of their piece.

They talk about the materials, the technical part and the tools. Yeah, we're all fascinated with that. Well, how did you do this? How did you get that happening?

Yeah, some of these things I've seen ultra realistic with the folds of skin and the pores out of marble, you know, and you can get lost in the technical aspects of practically anything. And there's a soullessness to it. I mentioned the fascination with hyperrealism.

Now it loses that interpretive quality and it seeks to impress through technical prowess.

Yeah. They leave me flat.

I'm on Facebook, so some art pages and there's a drawing page and the majority of the things shown on the drawing pages are as the photorealism. And it just.

Yeah, take a picture.

I don't care.

I know. I think it's a. It's an interesting phase to go through, maybe. Have you seen anything in some of these new AI generated things?

I have not actually. I've maybe been. Been avoiding it on purpose. I. I wouldn't know if I saw it. Probably.

Yeah. I'll show you some after we're done. Okay. It's extremely compelling. And there's. People are collectively freaking out over it.

The first thing you'll be struck with is you spend all those years learning to airbrush or learning to letter and you click a button and there it is. And it's like you feel like a pioneer. And now that clears the way. You don't have to spend your time learning the mechanics of it.

You can step back and you can get into the ideation process and the thought processes behind it and. And approach it that way. For better or worse. I don't know. It's here to stay. And I heard, heard or read something some experts said. Yeah.

Remember this time period because you look back and you go, remember when? Yeah, right before it happened. So I think that's kind of ominous.

Well, Technology has been changing the way artists are thought of and seen. I can remember a friend of mine who was a musician, got a job at Sears. And Sears had a thing for a while where they would do your portrait bust.

And it was a three. They do a 3D scan of your head. Weird 3D scan of your head. And they would send it out. And then you could get a portrait bust in any size you want.

You could get one for your desk, you could get one for your table.

How good were they?

They were pretty accurate. I. But they were lifeless. I don't even think an artist came back in and sort of touched it up or tried to make it unique.

But it's a novelty then.

Yeah, kind of. And Sears had these stations for a while, but it didn't go anywhere.

Well, it's there now. My son works at a firm. Half the firm is 3D and they work for Microsoft. And they have the scanner looks like a vacuum cleaner.

It's got a broad head and it looks like a vacuum cleaner. And they scan your body and it goes into the 3D, into a 3D printer. And they can print a small sculpture view. That looks real.

Yeah. And that's the same technology, the same stuff. When you do 3D printing and all that, we've got that.

I mean, that's not AI but it's for someone who spent years learning how to carve or wax sculpt.

So what do you do? What do you do, you think, oh, the death of the written word. Nobody's into penmanship anymore, or buggy whips. I don't know.

Maybe it's a natural progression.

I don't know. I don't know. Some other wave. That's the job of the youth of today to figure out.

Truly well put. Exactly. Because the evolving thought processes behind what is art and what is not art.

She's since passed, but she was an amazing wildlife illustrator. She worked at NAPS as a fashion illustrator. And she went to Parsons in New York and she had this story. They were all in there and they. Ruling pens.

They were using ruling pens. And for our listeners, a ruling pen is a picture of little metal lobster claw with a dial on it.

And you, you take the ink dropper and you put a drop of ink in it. And the dial would dictate how thin or thick the rule was. And a whole discipline surrounding using these things.

Somebody brought in a set of tech pens. The instructor came up, picked them up, opened the window, and flung them out the window.

The rapidograph pens, Repetographs.

Because. No, no. I mean, well, what you're faced with is somebody's fierce new technology. And we laugh now, but how different is it? It's the same.

Anything you don't understand, you're going to fear. I've been told.

Yeah. I'm sure that there are artists out there who still respect that. They want some evidence of a human touch.

But the technology is moving in another direction. They'll find a way to combine the two to make it maybe a new art form.

I mean, well, some of these things coming out, painting with light. You mentioned scrap fest is like old hat now. And it was like it was smoking hot, you know, 10 years ago.

Right.

Repurposing things into artwork or into anything creative. And I'm always impressed. It's hard to see anything original, but once in a while, you'll still see something original.

And the latest thing for me are these. These 3D renderings on sidewalks on the sides of buildings.

I mean, there's a sweet spot, you got to stand a certain way, but they're mind bending when they work. And it's a little.

Is it like op art? Like Bridget, you know, Bridget Riley did some op art where the kind of the optical.

The canvas seems to move when it's flat, but it looks like it's undulating.

Yeah. There was a guy, he did a. It was a. Like a dragonfly or a scorpion or something.

And the aspect of it on this wall, it looked like a painting until you walked a certain way and then it looked 3D. I mean, because the shadow and your perspective on the wall like that, you know, artwork that challenges perceptions is huge.

I think of this artist that down pillows made out of white marble, but it looks like a down pillow, but it's marble like that. I think it's a little gimmicky, a little bit. You know, they're taking. Taken liberties with it, but that seems to be a thing now too.

Is there anything ahead that your inquisitiveness will lead you to?

To be honest, for the last couple of days, I've been looking at bonsai trees.

Bonsai trees. No kidding? Yeah.

Yeah, no kidding.

That's kind of cool.

It's fascinating. Yeah. So I've been.

I've been watching a lot of videos on YouTube on, you know, what to do, how to start out Bonsai so my understanding, you know, I don't know. I like it.

My understanding is those aren't a species of tree. Those are like actual trees. They're just tended a certain way.

Right. They like junipers. They use, not broadleaf trees, but like pine trees. So the needles are small.

So when they keep trimming them down, they look like leaves when they're really, you know, needles and they bend them to their will. They've got this kind of rubber coated really heavy wire that they wrap around limbs and they train them. So you've got to be patient.

So I don't know how long I'll be able to get into bonsai if I do. Because if you start from a seed which is in my video I saw today, then it's take you 35 years.

Years. That's what I've. There's a 400 year old one somewhere that everyone just kind of drops, you know, jaws drop.

So there, there are some, there are some starter like bonsais that are out there that you can get or you can get trees, you can get the right kind of shrub so you don't have to grow it from. From scratch.

That is. I am not surprised.

That looks interesting.

I'm not surprised. Your level of inquisitiveness and adventuresome nature and your fearlessness I mentioned. He says why not? You're not going to break anything.

Dive into it. I gotta believe you're not too hard on yourself when you fail.

Not anymore.

Good.

Not anymore. I've stopped throwing things.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a good one. I like that.

Yeah.

I've been ready to put a rubber padding on my garage walls for the things that I've.

I've seen some of your posts. Yeah. There's some frustration there, but it's just part of the process.

Yeah.

You start over. You start over.

Yeah. And the embarrassment is kind of a. There's a level of accountability with the embarrassment that's kind of unique.

Yeah.

Yeah. What are you with the music? What are you gonna do there? You go. Do any recording?

Actually there's been a couple recordings done of kind of improvisational jams I've been at recently. That Denny Preston, who plays along with us, who has put out just for us to listen what we did.

There's a guy that I met at an open mic night who I've gotten to know and he's a guitar player, pianist and he and I are working out some tunes. We got about 30 or 40 tunes we've worked on. It's just a saxophone And a.

No, no, no. Don't. Not just. But you're excited about it. I can see it in your face.

Yeah, well, yeah, I sing a little. When I retired from LCC, I took some singing classes just because I thought, well, maybe that'll work.

That is awesome. Now, what I want to ask you is, for most of your career, you're working solo on these projects.

You are the beginning, the middle, and the end of everything you do. You control every aspect of your artwork. Now you have to rely on other people. It's collaborative. I mean, does that, like. Does that gel well with.

With your style? You know, does it mesh with how you're used to working?

Music. Music collaboration?

Yeah, for sure.

No, that's. That's the one thing that I really like about music versus. Versus art. Art is very singular and isolating.

Yeah.

And what I like about music is it's collaborative. It's.

You like that?

Oh, yeah. You don't have to carry it all. Try to fit in, especially with the improvisation we do. We get a bunch of guys together who all ranges of ability.

And somebody calls out a key, and we just. Somebody starts a beat and we start.

Isn't that the best chemistry, though? I mean, because you can come up with results that aren't, like, blueprinted.

Yeah. Some stuff is very surprising. And a lot of stuff is monotonous. Monotonous and, you know, gets kind of mundane.

But, yeah, for the few moments in a improvisation where everybody kind of is sort of riding the wave together, and there's no. There's no feeling like it.

I can't only imagine.

There's no feeling like. Like being in. In the middle of making music.

Yeah.

Really isn't.

Wow.

And you don't have that stress, like, if you're going to school for it and then you're going to be judged by it, and you're your own judge, and you're there to experience it and to breathe. Breathe it in rather than submit it as a. You know, to be tested or whatever.

Right.

That has to be. I can imagine. I always regretted not going into music. It probably would have been a disaster.

But, you know, it's never too late, Bruce.

That's what I've been told. In my arthritic hands would argue that.

But I started out. I started out playing harmonica. I took some. Some harmonica classes at LCC.

You're a lifelong learner.

I am, yeah. I took some harmonica classes. And then from there, I said, well, the harmonica. I'm just doing this because I really want to play the Saxophone.

So let's just. Let's just do the saxophone.

That is nuts. There was a story, very briefly, and then we got to wrap up, and I heard this, and I'm going to wreck it. I don't know the name.

There was a famous jazz saxophonist. It wasn't like a known name. I didn't know the name, at any rate.

And he was broke and he sold his Saxon and there was a concert somewhere and he bought another one. It was plastic because the music manufacturers were like, fiddling around with, like. Plastic?

Yeah, there's plastic horns out there.

Yeah. And it was like this bargain Montgomery Ward thing. And he bought it and he took it in. He blew the roof off the place. And he was poor.

But this concert was pivotal to the entire genre of jazz, apparently. It was like the reawakening. And they've got this saxophone somewhere. It was like 150 box, and they're fighting over it.

Who gets to, like, keep it and put it behind glass?

I'll have to look it up. I'm curious to see who the.

Yeah, apparently a big deal. And even that night, they weren't even. They were, like, messing around. But there were parts of it that were like that. Yeah.

It's been really cool catching up with you, Jack. Yeah, this is great.

I'm really impressed with your work. Your work at LCC and also your artwork. You know, your Bennett Art. Art Prize. And.

Yeah, it feeds a need. It keeps me busy. You know, kids are grown.

So what are you gonna do? Pass the torch onto your son?

So, yeah, boy, I mean, yeah, it's. It's. It's really neat seeing that happen. I appreciate that. Thank you. Well, sir, it's been good to catching up with you.

Maybe we'll have you back with a banzai.

Oh, well, maybe.

All right.

If the show's still on in 30 years.

Yeah. Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Twyla Tharp once said, art is the only way to run away without leaving home.

If you want to check out what I've been talking about, just visit this episode at LCCconnect.org. Art Happens Here is a production of LCC Connect. Thanks for lending us your imagination.