2002 Distinguished Achievement Award: Bob Regier ’52

Bob Regier never thought his interest in art would “lead to anything.” Yet, almost 50 years later, it is evident that his work as a printmaker, painter, graphic designer and professor of art has had a tremendous impact.

No one has a good explanation for this, but from about 1946-50, little Mountain Lake, Minn., produced a crop of young artists whose names are still known in the Mennonite world and beyond.

Among them are brothers Ken and John Hiebert, Allan Eitzen, Mary Balzer Buskirk, Warren Kliewer and the recipient of the 2002 Distinguished Achievement Award, Bob Regier.

Although he never had an art class until he was a senior in high school, Regier was identified as “the school artist.” He knows he did a lot of drawing as a child, because his mother saved his work—a collection he now has. And his father, William H. Regier, who as a boy of Finnish background was adopted by Rev. and Mrs. H. H. Regier, “was quite gifted in illustration and cartooning,” Regier says.

In fact, following high school, his father went to study at the Art Institute of Chicago. After a year at the institute, he was drafted to serve in World War I (noncombatant) and was never able to return to Chicago. It was probably not coincidence, Regier says now, that he himself would later study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The 1950s and early 1960s were pioneer days for Mennonites and the arts. Regier was in the forefront, though not usually by his own design. A 1952 Bethel graduate in social science, Regier and, his wife, Vernette, went to Akron, Pa., to work with Mennonite Central Committee in 1953. “On my application under ‘interests,’ I had put down ‘art,’ not thinking it would lead to anything,” he says. During his two years with MCC, Regier worked as an illustrator and designer, and even helped set up MCC’s first print shop.

Then he was asked to work for the General Conference Mennonite Church. “I was interested, but thought I needed more training first,” he says. He went to the Art Institute from 1955-57 and from 1957-1963 worked at the General Conference, where one of his responsibilities was designing and laying out The Mennonite.

It was during this time period that Regier created what is probably his best-known image, “the thing more people identify with me than any other.” He calls it “the family group print,” a pen-and-ink drawing he created as “an illustration for a story, the kind of thing I kicked out every week.” Mennonite Press, where The Mennonite was printed, began getting requests for copies of the illustration, so they made it into a print. No accurate records have been kept over the years, but Regier thinks between 800 and 1,000 of the prints have been sold.

Regier taught art at Bethel from 1960 to 1992. In 1965, he was appointed chair of the department. In addition to his teaching, he was director of the art gallery. “Occasionally, we did things that were more daring, more than hanging pictures on a wall,” he says. “For example, one exhibit was called ‘Function and Fantasy,’ which compared common, ordinary consumer products with contrasting design premises—severe functionality versus the fantastic. It wasn’t judgment; it was juxtaposition. The symbol for the exhibit was a simple, elegant glass cream pitcher and a moo-cow creamer. I still have that moo-cow creamer.”

In 1992, Regier took early retirement “to devote myself to my own work, although at the time I wasn’t sure what that was.” Since then, in addition to working on his preferred medium of printmaking, Regier has put considerable time, energy and expertise into designing museum exhibits. His interest in this began when he was in charge of the Bethel College art gallery, but it really took flight with his first major project—designing the permanent exhibits for the Kauffman Museum in North Newton, Kan.

On May 25, Kauffman Museum opened a major exhibit of Regier’s work, reflecting its many facets and influences—from his childhood; to his work as a designer, mostly for the church institutions; to the crafting of exhibit space; to his teaching and classroom work at Bethel College; to the prairie, which forms the basis for much of his “most personal work;” to “shaping worship.”

Relating to the latter is a set of seven liturgical banners that Regier designed several years ago for First Mennonite Church in Hillsboro, Kan., at the request of then-pastor Keith Harder. Women of the church quilted the banners. Since then, seven other Mennonite churches have made one or several of the banners and the Silver Needles Quilt Guild of Salina, Kan., is making a quilt that Regier designed, which is an abstraction of the Smoky Hills River landscape.

“I’d have never guessed five years ago that I would design a quilt,” he says. “People have asked if I had ‘some big plan’ for my retirement. I say, ‘No, I’d rather just be alert and ready to respond to whatever comes along.’”