Art Department to host memorial for Gelsy Verna

Painter and UW-Madison art professor Gelsy Verna (1961-2008) kept the first painting she ever did: a paint-by-number landscape that her mother gave her when she was in the hospital at the age of 10.

Verna died from a health condition in her home in Madison, Wis., where she was found by her close friends on Tuesday, March 11. Funeral services for Verna and her father, who died later the same week, were held on March 22 at the Mount Royal Funeral Complex, in Outremont, Quebec.

The UW-Madison Art Department will host a public memorial service on Friday, May 2, at 3:30 p.m., in the banquet room of the University Club, 803 State Street on Library Mall.

Verna was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1961, the second of six children.  Her father was a radiologist and her mother, a teacher. She lived in Haiti and then Zaire until age 7; her family moved to Montreal, Quebec in 1968. She received a B.F.A. in 1988 and an M.F.A. in 1990, both from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She came to the UW-Madison Art Department in 2001 after teaching painting and drawing at the University of Iowa for six years.

Verna’s work has been in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the country and across the globe, including Austria, German and Japan. Some of her pieces are in the collections of the Southern Graphics collection at the University of Mississippi, the Princeton University Art Museum and Citibank headquarters in Chicago.

Her work explores themes of identity, traveling, and memory.

“My paintings develop in a very intuitive manner and use the individual experience as a model to explore aspects of the self with within the collective,” she says in her faculty profile on the Art Department website. “The paintings, drawings and collages have elements of both, figurative and abstraction.”

From a young age, Verna wanted to be involved in art but also wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps and become a doctor, she said in an interview for the Iowa Women Artists Oral History Project.  That interview can be found online at http://www.lucidplanet.com/iwa/ArtistPages/vernag.htm.

“I'm glad I didn't even go into art at first, because I like to think that I messed up someplace else, and then got my focus in art,” she said in the interview. “For me, art is the place that gave me my self-confidence, even though sometimes I shake my head and I can't believe. I mean, it's a field where you're kind of walking with your heart on your sleeve, and this idea of self-confidence through that. But I think there was always this little voice – or I would tell it to myself – I think you can do it.”

UW-Madison art colleague Fred Stonehouse specifically remembers Verna’s infectious laughter.

“She would bend in half when she laughed really hard and, for some reason, she would touch her nose at the same time… Joking around with her was always a highlight of the day,” Stonehouse says. “I’m glad that I had the opportunity to know her and call her a friend.  I miss her smiling face already, but I know that I’ll remember it always.”

Jennifer Angus, associate professor of design studies in the UW-Madison School of Human Ecology, became a close friend of Verna’s about 20 years ago, when both attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

“We were friends and we had a bond since we were both foreign students from Canada,” Angus says. “I can recall sitting around with Gelsy and other students rehashing what was said during the end-of-semester critiques and celebrating the opening of our graduation show.”

Art Department alumnus Jose Rodriguez spent one semester learning from Verna before he took a leave of absence. He says that Verna’s presence on the faculty was a significant factor in choosing the department.

“She always offered honest and constructive feedback and never failed to bring insightful and enlightening resources and references to the table, and I was very much looking forward to working with her again upon my return,” he says. “For me, as an artist of color coming from a non-Western art history perspective, Gelsy brought a diversity to the UW Art Department that was very important and will be sorely missed… She was an inspiration to everyone I know who had the pleasure of working with her.”

Fellow painter and art professor Carol Pylant remembers Verna as a wonderful, kind and unique person.

“What I remember most about Gelsy is her smile and our last conversation – she said she would like to live somewhere where she could go barefoot,” Pylant says. “I will miss seeing her quietly enter the painting studio during my class on the way to her office.”

Verna is survived by her 5-year-old daughter, Clara Alicia; mother Clara; five siblings, Henri-Donald, Stéfan, Gaëtane, Josèfe Marie and Mahalia; and eight nieces and nephews.

Verna’s father, Joseph Marie Verna, died on March 15, 2008.

In lieu of flowers, donations are being accepted for the Clara Alicia Verna College Fund, 4509 Ames Street, Madison, WI, 53711-1421, and the Creative Legacy fund #12904339 in Honor of Gelsy Verna via the University of Wisconsin Foundation, U.S. Bank Lockbox , P.O. Box 78807 , Milwaukee, WI 53278.

To read and submit memories of Gelsy Verna, please go online to http://gelsy-verna.memory-of.com.