BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Art can come in countless forms – a melodic symphony that leaves an audience in hushed awe; an image that invokes the power, pain or beauty of a moment in time; the graceful sweep of a dancer moving across a stage to the ebb and flow of the music.

Here at Illinois Wesleyan University, our fine arts professors are more than instructors. They are active participants in their art. Three of our professors were posed the question, “How do you create art?” The answers from Associate Professor of Dance and Movement Jean Kerr, Professor of Composition and Theory David Vayo and Professor of Art and Design Sherri McElroy were dynamic and perhaps strikingly similar, reflective of a line from poet John Keats, “That which is creative must create itself.”

“There is a moment in the creative process when you have to give up all control,” said Professor Kerr. “You have to trust that what flows out of you is coming from somewhere that is smarter than you.” Kerr has been creating dance and fight choreography for the stage for more than 20 years. “I do believe in a rhythm in the universe, in life, in physics. I do believe that this thing we call our existence is a miraculous dance, and if I am quiet and open, I can tap into that.”

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, a man who can arguably be called one of the most important men in the history of the nation. Historians have debated his wisdom, his politics and his intentions for more than a century. But what, in essence, is the legacy Lincoln left behind? Those close to Illinois Wesleyan University offer their insights.

“Without Lincoln, the Civil War would have ended the American experiment on a rather sad note,” said Robert S. Eckley, president of Illinois Wesleyan from 1968 to 1986. Eckley, who served as president of the Abraham Lincoln Association and was honored with their Logan Hay Medal in 2007, is completing a book on Bloomington attorney and Lincoln friend Leonard Swett. “Lincoln was a master politician and strategist. He held us together as a nation and started an emancipation that has not been carried through to finality even to this day, but we are getting closer,” he said.

Lincoln’s efforts as the Great Emancipator have a direct affect on current lives and politics, said Professor Robert Bray, Illinois Wesleyan’s R. Forrest Colwell Professor of English. “I can give you Lincoln’s legacy in one word — Obama,” said Bray, who co-wrote the play Lincoln’s in Town!, based upon Lincoln’s famous “lost speech” given in Bloomington. “Lincoln and his Congress started the road to civil rights, which culminated in the election last November of Barack Obama.”

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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – The passing of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist John Updike on Tuesday evoked memories of his visit to the Illinois Wesleyan University campus, and the thoughts of Updike scholar James Plath, a professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan.

“What John Updike has done for American literature is astounding,” said Plath, who has studied Updike for more than 20 years, including working closely with the novelist while editing the book Conversations with John Updike in 1994. “His work connects us with our American literary past, and he is forever a part of that now.” Updike died Tuesday at the age of 76 after a battle with lung cancer.

Plath discovered the works of Updike in an English class at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. “I didn’t choose to be an Updike scholar, he chose me,” he said. “His work spoke to me in ways other writers hadn’t.” Plath decided to write his dissertation on Updike, and began a correspondence with the celebrated author. “He didn’t do my work for me, but he was always gracious,” said Plath, who wrote his dissertation on “The Painterly Aspects of John Updike’s Fiction.”

Updike was featured speaker at the 1993 Hemingway Days’ Writers’ Workshop & Conference in Key West, which Plath directed from 1986-96. “That was the first time I met Updike face-to-face,” said Plath, who spoke with the novelist as he sat for a portrait painted by Hemingway’s grandson, artist Edward Hemingway. “We visited Edward Hemingway’s first art exhibition in Key West. Updike, who was a skilled critic of the arts, pointed to one painting and said, ‘This is the best piece in the collection.’” Plath later bought the work and donated it to The Ames Library, where it hangs today.

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