A Happy Lonesomeness: Grant Reynard A MONA Moment By Ron Roth Director Museum of Nebraska Art

Every morning I arrive at work, open the door to my office, drop my briefcase, and briefly contemplate a small watercolor hanging on the wall to the side of my desk.

It is a quiet scene. Two old ladies in plain black dresses and dress hats sitting on a bench in an art museum gallery. The artist-Grant Reynard-has them huddled in animated conversation. With a few deft details-a white lace collar draped over the shoulders of the woman with her back to us, the thick, round black spectacles of her companion-they are clearly of the old fashioned school.

I love this piece, its serene charm continually refreshes my spirit. But until recently, I missed entirely Reynard's witty comment on the scene. For hovering above the old ladies, on the gallery wall in front of them, is a very large, abstract painting, to which they are paying not the slightest attention. I think it is safe to say that these ladies are likely not the target market for modern art. And of course, the reason they are in the art museum at all has nothing to do with art, but everything to do with the museum as an island of refreshment-a place for conversation and companionship.

Grant Reynard, by the way, was born and raised in Grand Island. He worked in his Father's music store, became a skilled pianist, playing in churches and dance halls. Ultimately, he attended the Chicago Art Institute, and launched a career as one of America's leading illustrators. His work appeared in the leading national publications of his day-The Saturday Evening Post, Harper's Bazaar, and many others. He exhibited frequently in New York Galleries, and his work was reviewed favorably in the New York Times, The New Yorker, and national art publications.

But what interests me about Reynard is not his fame, but something he said about Nebraska and the way it informed his work. He said:

There is a peculiar something which happens to me when I am in Nebraska. Some kind of great fullness in my feelings. The land, the sky, old friends and new ones found-and a kind of happy lonesomeness well full with sentiment for things and folks gone, but very real in memory.

That "great fullness of feeling," that "sentiment for things and folks," steal across time and space into my office in this delicate watercolor over my desk. It is ripe with Reynard's happy lonesomeness and his eye-his eye which takes me to that place where beauty endows the commonest moments; where, as I examine his work, I examine myself; and as I make discoveries in his work, I am discovering myself.

This has been Ron Roth, director of the Museum of Nebraska Art-MONA to its friends. The state collection of Nebraska Art administered by the University of Nebraska at Kearney and the Nebraska Art Collection Foundation.