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Bruce Winslow: "I am an artist"
by Nancy Sajdak Manning
- Photo by: Avram Golden
Since 1997, Bruce Winslow has directed the Alden B. Dow Museum of Science and Arts, which exists within the Midland Center for the Arts (MCFTA). The museum’s mission statement explains that it “celebrates discovery, creativity and individual expression through science and art, and the interplay between them.”
A Midland native, Winslow is a graduate of Central Michigan University (BFA) and the Pratt Institute (MFA) in Brooklyn, New York. He began working at MCFTA in 1988, right out of grad school, as a part-time employee. He managed studio tours, quickly moved into public relations, and ultimately became interim director (1997), then director.
Winslow paints large, improvisational abstract oils, and has participated in many group and solo exhibitions. He has taught studio art and college-level art history. He is also a musician.
Q. Will you share some specifics about your art education focus at Pratt Institute?
A. I was a painter. I did minor in Art History. I studied quite a bit of print to develop as a print major there as well—in the field of printmaking, which I have never gone into.
Q. How does your personal art aesthetic relate to your work at the Center?
A. Artistically, I believe there’s a point in time where a young person says, ‘I am an artist.’ To me, it’s a self-declaration. And based on that, you have proclaimed a responsibility. And to me, that responsibility means that you work hard, that you are prolific, that you pursue the realm regardless of how you feel. It’s your responsibility to the discipline itself.
A person really thinks about art just being a fun thing to do, and it’s not. Basically, it’s a life style; and I would say that 70 percent of the time that I have in the studio, I don’t really want but I do it . . . . I’m not as prolific as I was ten years ago, but I have greater responsibilities as the director.
Q. What or whom first instilled your interest in art?
A. I really don’t know. I always liked to draw and to color as a little boy. I actually went to undergraduate school and didn’t know what I was going to major in. I had an opportunity to go to college . . . but chose not to go for several years, entering the working world fresh out of high school . . . . It [college] was a gift [from California relatives] to—‘pursue what you like’. . . . They, in that gesture of generosity and wisdom, changed my life forever.
- Photo by: Avram Golden
. . . I think, if anything, my art came out of my passion for music. Lots of musicians in our family. They [family] thought I was nuts going into art. That’s why I minored in Biology [undergrad] because they felt I couldn’t earn a living in art. So they said maybe I could do biological illustration . . . .
Q. Will you share more about your childhood and parental family?
A. I was really an anomaly. I come from a family of nine kids—seven boys and two girls. A blue-collar, hard-working family. My father was a laborer at Dow Chemical.
My mom was a homemaker and an incredible lady in that after all the kids were gone and she was in her 70s and 80s . . . she went back [to school] and earned her high school degree, then went on to graduate from Delta College. She majored in Law Enforcement . . . . I think she did that because I had a brother who was an FBI agent . . .
Q. What type of music do you play?
A. Well, I’ve played in rock, country, and blues bands all my life; and I also am a songwriter and do a solo presentation as well. I’m a guitarist—a bass player . . . . mildly play piano . . . . I started on the saxophone in the fourth grade, which—then of course, John, Paul, George and Ringo came along and changed our lives forever. I was a musician way before I was a painter.