Don Swartzentruber
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Don Michael Swartzentruber (swärt-zen-trü-ber) is an American artist who signs with his surname. His painting style has elements of regionalism, neo-pop and surrealism.[1][2][3][4][5]
His efforts are noteworthy in diverse mediums such as the Pop Mennonite and the Totem Triptychs exhibits, the Silence Is Madness album cover, and carnival caricature portraits. In 2015 he transitioned from narrative painting to sequential storytelling. He is currently writing and illustrating a sizable graphic novel.
Pop Mennonite
Swartzentruber was born in 1966 in Greenwood, Delaware.[6] He was raised in a temperate Old Order home and church. While in secondary school he did illustration work for their Amish Mennonite denomination’s publishing house.[7] After Greenwood Mennonite School he briefly attended the conference’s post-secondary institution, Rosedale Bible College, in Ohio.[8] Years later, these foundational years inspired the creation of the exhibit Pop-Mennonite. It is a collection of paintings, drawings, and audio. A soundtrack included a surreal edit of preaching and congregational hymns. It accompanied the 2005 exhibits at Bluffton University [9][10] and Goshen College [11][12] Swartzentruber was a significant voice in thematically appropriating Mennonite culture into contemporary art.[13][14] The paintings were used for numerous book and journal covers.[15][16][17][18] Canadian Mennonite Journal called the art a “jarring juxtaposition of the sacred and the secular.” Mennonite Weekly called it “Weird. Disturbing. Bizarre.” [19][20][21][22][23] The harshest criticisms of the exhibit came from Mennonite bloggers reviewing the paintings online. In 2023 a series of videos were created describing the artist’s thinking behind Pop-Mennonite.
The Totem Triptychs
This exhibit is 36 triptychs made up of small oil paintings. The 6” x 8” panels were designed to be interchangeable. 46,656 different compositions can be composed by rearranging the head, body and feet. The paintings were exhibited at Art Space Lima, the Lincoln Center and other museums. Swartzentruber’s preliminary drawings were stream of consciousness, leaving the meaning of the work rather nebulous. In 1998 the images were published online. The artist reached out to the writing community to create reader interpretations. Viewers emailed their submissions. Within days these “texters” could see their post on-line next to the artwork. Most authors added words to an individual painting. Two contributors, Marc Harshman [24] (Poet Laureate of West Virginia), and British wordsmith Cleveland W. Gibson wrote text for all 36 triptychs. Swartzentruber’s idea was an early form of social media. The Totem Triptych collaboration was six years before Facebook, and it was twelve years before Instagram allowed the public to make comments about images. Reader interpretation about online images soon became routine.[25]
Facing the Sublime and Grotesque
Inspired by the Artists’ book (Livre d’art) movement, in 2004, Swartzentruber created a traveling exhibit. His source for the art was the masks and taxidermy collection at the Chicago Field Museum. The sketches and artwork were created on pages in a scrapbook-like portfolio that could be opened. For exhibition each page could be removed and displayed on a museum wall. An image was used by Disproductions for the covers of poet John Sweet’s book Henry Chalise.
