80 YEARS OF ARTISTRY. No lie. Anders (Andy) Shafer's mother noted his inclination toward art at the age of two, when he drew locomotives with smokestacks. The artist and former UW-Eau Claire professor, pictured.

Anders C. Shafer, known to his students as Andy, retired from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire as a Maxwell Schoenfeld Distinguished Professor – and is being  honored at forthcoming exhibit, “Meter and Medium: A Visual Festschrift of Anders C. Shafer.” 

Shafer's legacy as a professor in UW-Eau Claire’s Art & Design Department will be celebrated through his artwork and words, as well as the works and words of 10 of his former students he taught in the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. From Monday, Sept. 8, through Wednesday, Oct. 1, the extensive, collaborative exhibit will be displayed at Ruth Foster Art Gallery inside the Haas Fine Arts Center (121 Water St., Eau Claire). The opening public reception will be on Thursday, Sept. 11, from 6-7:30pm.

"This exhibit will celebrate Andy, primarily through the eyes and words of his former students, who are now artists in their own right, and the influence he had on their work and their art careers."

ANNA ZOOK

UW-EAU CLAIRE ARTS LIBRARIAN, EXHIBIT CURATOR

About Andy Shafer

80 years of artistry: drawing, sketching, and painting; storyteller; poet; painter. 40-plus years teaching at UW-Eau Claire: creating the illustration program, establishing the university’s art collection, starting a Saturday drawing group, and so much more.

“My mother noticed I started to draw when I was two years old,” he shared, stood at his Banbury Place studio's aged, paint-splattered wooden easel. “I had drawn a train locomotive with six smokestacks. My older sister told me it should have one. And I told her, well, I created one with six, and that was that.”

Born in Bucyrus, Ohio, near Cleveland; he grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas; Paris, France; and Washington, D.C. He came to Eau Claire to teach at the university with his wife, Barbara, after earning a BFA from the University of Iowa and an MFA from the University of Cincinnati in drawing and painting.

“When I first started teaching in 1967 at UWEC, I was younger than many of my students, some of them Korean War Veterans,” he recalled. “I always thought my job as a teacher (was) to inspire my students to believe in themselves.”   

Now 82 years old, he continues to create. He officially retired from UW-Eau Claire in 2011, after teaching there for 43 years. Yet, he already knew how he was going to spend his free time after retiring: Creating more artwork, something he’d been doing all his life. (Retirement; what’s that?)

"In academia, 'festschrift' is a German word which literally means 'celebration writing,' or a celebration publication, honoring a respected person – especially an academic – and presented during their lifetime."

ANNA ZOOK

UW-EAU CLAIRE ARTS LIBRARIAN, EXHIBIT CURATOR

Shafer's paint-splattered easel in Banbury Place.

Shafer is perhaps best known for his immersion paintings, in which he researches a certain painter, person, or historical event before reinterpreting the selected historical concept and narrative through his own creative vision.

He developed the genre of multi-paneled large sequential paintings, which tell a story, much like a complex comic strip – but each frame is a painting and a story unto itself. The forthcoming exhibit will feature Shafer's sequential paintings: “Buffalo Bill’s Farewell,” “Assassination Attempt on Harry Truman," and “Rembrandt’s Honeymoon and the Lost Painting.”

... again, an artist's office.

The sheer volume of his work is overwhelming, and beautifully impactful. Shafer's work has been exhibited in more than 250 national and regional competitions, and he received one of the National Endowment for the Arts' first-ever awards. His work is represented by galleries in from Chicago to Sacramento, to Portland and Washington, D.C., where he had five one-person shows at Gallery K. Shafer's work is also part of the public collections of museums, including the Portland Art Museum, the Sheldon Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska, and the Smithsonian Museum.

He has also authored and illustrated a number of books, the most notable being children’s picture book “The Fantastic Journey of Pieter Bruegel” published in 2002; and has won several national and international awards for that work.

Most recently, in 2024, he collaborated with his daughter Ariel and created colorful pictures to complement her prose poetry in “Mother Nature’s Apron.” 

As Shafer shared online, “I paint like a painter, the way I learned, and think like both a painter and poet. I think of my paintings as painted poems.” Daughter poet, like father poet-painter.

About The Exhibit

“In academia, 'festschrift' is a German word which literally means 'celebration writing,' or a celebration publication, honoring a respected person – especially an academic – and presented during their lifetime,” explained Anna M. Zook, arts librarian at UW-Eau Claire’s McIntyre Library, curator of “Meter and Medium: A Visual Festschrift of Anders C. Shafer.” 

“This exhibit will celebrate Andy, primarily through the eyes and words of his former students, who are now artists in their own right,” Zook explained, “And the influence he had on their work and their art careers.”

For Zook, the curation is a labor of love. As a teenager, she lived right around the corner from Shafer's home in Eau Claire's Third Ward. As part of the forthcoming exhibit, she and her husband Aaron will be re-creating a replica of his paint-splattered wooden easel in a separate section of the gallery.

There, those in attendance can write or draw their impressions of the exhibit, or note their experiences with Shafer, on a square piece of paper. Carrying out the theme of Shafer’s sequential paintings, these papers will then form a living, moving tribute as a ginormous sequential painting – a veritable festschrift to Shafer.

UW-Eau Claire’s Foster Art Gallery Director, Amanda Bulger, is also a former student of Shafer's. She is thrilled to be honoring him and will also be heavily involved with the hanging and set-up of the gallery.

Guest Artists; Shafer's Former Students

The 10 guest artists are contributing to the Festschrift of Andy Shafer at the Foster Art Gallery, through art and testimonials. Those former students include: Cameron J. Anderson of Madison, Wis. (liminalmaker.com); Rebecca Crowell of Dixon, New Mexico (rebeccacrowell.com); David Knowlton of Santa Fe, New Mexico (davidknowltonfineart.com); Barry Krammes of Houston, Texas (barrykrammes.com); Mary O'Leary of Madison, Wis. (maryolearyart.com); Andrew Ritchie of Eau Claire, Wis. (@andrewritchie); Tim Seeley of Chicago, Ill. (@timseeley); Mary "Zap" Zapchenk of Shoreview, Minn. (marczapchenk.com); and Frank and Lynn Zetzman of Wausau, Wis. (youtu.be/m6If9biVkBs).

A shot of "Meter and Medium: A Visual Festschrift of Anders C. Shafer" just beginning to be put together.

“Meter and Medium: A Visual Festschrift of Anders C. Shafer" will be on display from Sept. 8-Oct. 1 at Ruth Foster Art Gallery inside the Haas Fine Arts Center (121 Water St., Eau Claire) • View additional information about the forthcoming exhibit on UW-Eau Claire's calendar • Learn more about the opening night reception on the calendar as well.