The Ottawa Campus

Issue date: 5/6/08 Section: Entertainment

Media Credit: Walt Ohnesorge-Fick Walt's guerrilla performance piece left many spectators confused and horrified. It was important to keep the project secret so that word of mouth didn't spoil crowd reaction.

Walt Ohnesorge-Fick grew up in what he calls "the tenacious chaos" of Lawrence, and took a few credits elsewhere before becoming one of the most visible fixtures here at the college. Walt's art is a popular topic of conversation around campus, though that was far from the original plan.

"I came to Ottawa University as a devout Pentecostal, thinking I'd major in Religion and become a preacher. I had already begun giving short sermons at my church in Kansas City," he said, but disillusionment was quick to creep in and Walt found himself with a new set of convictions "(or lack thereof)."

"It was Erika Marksbury's Feminist/Womanist Theology class that helped me the most in understanding myself and my surroundings," he remembers, giving the course a gold star. "The class taught me to value freedom in many forms; freedom of expression, freedom of will, etc."

Walt dropped the Religion major when the conversations he was having began to feel redundant. "I found that I had more immediate intellectual freedom in my art classes with Frank Lemp," he said. "As a result, I plan to graduate from this wheel of Samsara in 2009 with a BA in Visual Art."

But being an Art major and being an artist aren't always the same, and Walt's modus operandi hasn't always been clear.

"When I came to Ottawa, I found that my art had a tendency to stare at me in ways that seemed quite alien to the person I thought I was," he said. "My art confronted me with aspects of myself that I only allowed to flourish when I was in the studio. I found that every piece of art I made was in some way a reflection of one or more of my various selves."

Walt views his art as a venue in which he can be honest with himself, and as a vehicle for sharing all the elements of himself - positive, negative, neutral - with the world around him. He believes that "art can only happen when a dialogue occurs between the piece and the viewer - a veritable call and response." He also believes that a communion with (and ingestion of) any artwork is fundamental to one's understanding of what "Art" means.

Continued...

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