Alumnus’ Legacy Set In Stone After Unique Donation to Art Department

| BY KEELEY MEIER ‘20

Two years ago, Fred Lawyer ‘76 completed an 18-hour drive to Augustana’s campus. The purpose was to make a donation to the art department. Not just any donation though — it was in the form of a several hundred-pound stone.

The stone that he drove cross country to donate is used for printmaking, also known as lithography, and is a limited, irreplaceable resource. Printmaking dates back to the late 1700s, and is the process of printing from a flat, special limestone that is treated to repel ink except where it is required for printing.

“Over the years, the stones become thinner and thinner, but each stone, with proper handling, has the potential to create thousands of images in its lifetime,” said Professor of Art Dr. Lindsay Twa.

Lawyer originally purchased the stone in the late-’70s from Graphic Chemical and Ink, a supplier of lithography materials, while studying for his Master of Fine Arts at Kansas State University. He then cut the stone down with a circular saw to the size it is today — about 24-by-32 inches. The stone traveled with him from Kansas to the University of South Alabama, where he landed a teaching job. However, Lawyer’s personal and the university’s presses were both too small to fit the newly acquired stone. For years, it sat in a crate until he brought the stone along on a trip to visit the late Carl Grupp.

Grupp, Augustana professor emeritus of art, was the founder of AU’s printmaking department and the Eide/Dalrymple Gallery. He was also Lawyer’s professor and friend, as well as one of his most impactful artistic influences.

“I could’ve taken it to the University of South Dakota or even Kansas State, my other alma maters, but I really thought it would get the best use and care at Augustana,” Lawyer said. “Plus, I very much have a soft spot for my whole Augustana experience and my time with Carl.

“The world is truly an emptier place without him. You just can’t replace people like Carl.”

Lawyer’s donation, Twa said, is priceless to Augustana’s printmaking studio.

“This stone will enable generations of student artists to create unique images of a scale that most others would only get to achieve as professional and advanced artists,” Twa said. “Augustana has long had a strong tradition in printmaking, and Fred is now paying it forward to our future students.”

Lawyer (left) said that Grupp (right) was one of his most significant artistic influences and mentors.

“This stone will enable generations of student artists to create unique images of a scale that most others would only get to achieve as professional and advanced artists.” — Dr. Lindsay Twa Professor of Art

Lawyer, a retired art teacher, is pictured with the printmaking press he built in 1976 for Augustana Professor Emeritus of Art Carl Grupp.

FROM THE U.S. NAVY TO AUGUSTANA

Lawyer’s path to Augustana was not a straightforward one. One of seven children born to World War II veterans, Lawyer was born in an Army hospital and spent his childhood in Taiwan, Germany and California, before his family settled in Sioux Falls. In 1969, a week after he received his high school diploma, Lawyer was drafted. Three years after his high school graduation and serving honorably in the Navy, Lawyer started school at Sioux Falls College, now the University of Sioux Falls, but transferred to Augustana his sophomore year. Here, he met Grupp, and his affinity for printmaking developed.

“Printmaking is what they call ‘super drawing,’” Lawyer said. “You can do things that are impossible to do with just drawing, and I’m into mechanical stuff, so it became my forte. Of course, once I got into it, I had to have all the equipment. So, I got my own roller, and I built my own. My first press that I built, I used the metal frame from a bunk bed that I slept in when I was a kid.” Some of Lawyer’s first lithography stones had check blanks still on the backs.

The summer after Lawyer graduated from Augustana, he also built a press for Grupp, who kept it until Lawyer drove his lithography stone to AU. Grupp expressed concern that, eventually, the press would be hauled off as scrap metal. So, just a few months after his first trip, Lawyer made the 18-hour drive to Sioux Falls once again to retrieve the press he had built for Grupp decades earlier.

“After just one year, I had to replace the tires on my truck because they had cord separation from transporting all that weight — all that speed and distance,” Lawyer laughed.

Lawyer, who taught high school art in Alabama, said that he applied many things he learned from Grupp to his own teaching.

“He was really not that much older than me — more like an older brother — but he definitely was a father figure in my art world,” said Lawyer. “He taught me how to draw, and I can’t tell you how many great meals I had at Carl’s table with him and his family when I was building his press, and even before.”

Lawyer, who is now retired and resides in Mobile, Alabama, still practices printmaking, but not as much as he used to. The stone Lawyer donated can be found in Augustana’s Center for Visual Arts, where printmaking students will use it to create art for years to come.

“When I donated the stone, it was gratis,” Lawyer said. “I was just happy to do it.” n

AUGUSTANA’S HEALTH SCIENCES MAKES MOVE TO VIRTUAL CADAVER TECHNOLOGY:

‘The evolution of educational methods has been amazing’

| BY JILL WILSON

Augustana University alumnus Greg Schultz ‘74, who was the first trained certified vascular surgeon in the region, believes that eventually virtual cadavers will, in most instances, take the place of the real thing. And, now, Augustana has one; one of only two known Anatomage Virtual Cadaver tables in South Dakota and one of only a few in the region.

The Anatomage table is state-of-the-art technology that allows students to explore, discover and study the human body. The table offers the most realistic virtual cadaver with stunning visualization of full-body anatomy in life-size.

“I have not seen it anywhere,” said Schultz, a vascular surgeon with Sanford Vascular Associates in Sioux Falls, who has dedicated his career to developing cutting-edge technology. “When we were granted the opportunity to go and experience it, I thought it was amazing. I just reflect on how we continue to learn differently. When I initially started my medical training, there were no CAT Scans, there were no MRIs and, now, we are learning virtually. As a result of this technology, people in the future will look back and say, ‘Yeah, they actually used to work on real cadavers.’”

Augustana faculty began dreaming of a virtual cadaver when Dr. Steven Matzner ‘90, professor of biology, came back with pictures of one after attending a conference in Pennsylvania. Along with Matzner, Drs. Paul Egland, Jennifer A.A. Gubbels and Mark Larson got together and applied Greg Schultz ‘74 and Karen (Devick) Schultz ‘75

for a grant, which they received from the Oliver Innovation Fund. Schultz, and his wife, Karen (Devick) Schultz ‘75, a music major whose parents were also Augustana graduates, gifted the remaining dollars needed to purchase the virtual cadaver table this spring.

“My wife and I benefited from the tremendous Augustana educational experience. In my liberal arts education, I truly learned how to learn and that prepared me well for the field of medicine in that physicians are indeed perpetual students,” said Greg. “As someone who has gained so much from the educational experience at Augustana, it made a great deal of sense to gift this educational tool that might stimulate the exceptional faculty and excite the gifted students of Augustana.”

Gubbels, associate professor of biology, said for a long time, anatomy classes at Augustana used cat cadavers as learning tools. With those becoming harder to come by, the classes switched to utilizing rabbits, which posed a problem for faculty in teaching students because the terminology for rabbits and humans isn’t always the same. Instead, the Anatomage table allows people to visualize human and/or animal anatomy at the highest level of accuracy.

“They take thin slices of real cadavers and image them and then incorporate those images into computer software,” said Assistant Professor of Biology Dr. Kevin Natukunda, who has both a Bachelor of Science in agriculture and nursing, as well as a Ph.D. in genetics, and was initially trained on the virtual cadaver. “You can actually see the heart beating. If we are looking at a certain bone, we can rotate it and see all the angles because this is 3D. You can also isolate different features.

“The Anatomage table comes preloaded with the software that enables students to ‘dissect’ and explore the human body’s inner workings with precision and detail. Students can repeatedly ‘dissect’ the cadavers, interact and learn anatomical systems and structures to better understand anatomy, physiology and pathophysiology.”

“It’s like the body is laying on the table,” added Gubbels. “... a life-size computer screen that you look down upon, but it can also project. So, if the instructor is doing something on the table, it’s projected up onto the screen in the classroom so the whole class can see what you’re looking at.”

With the virtual cadaver delivered to campus just a few months ago, faculty say they will keep working with the technology to begin incorporating it into more and more courses; not just anatomy courses, but developmental biology and physiology — just to name a few.

“I’m particularly excited that this educational experience can easily be used by other fields of study like physical therapy, athletic training, nursing and even dentistry — fields that had not previously been exposed to cadaver anatomy,” Greg said.

Despite the technology, Natukunda and Gubbels said the social and natural sciences still come together. Even though the cadaver is virtual, they recognize and will always try to get their students to recognize that these were real people who donated their bodies to science.

“They all consented to have their bodies used in this way to further the knowledge of people that they had never met. It is amazing that their donation will affect so many people,” added Gubbels.

And, like those who sacrificed their bodies for science, donors like the Schultzes will have an impact on so many, for many years to come.

“The evolution of educational methods has been amazing in the field of education in general, and in particular, in health care,” said Greg. “Institutions that fail to embrace these new technological advances are destined to fall behind their peers and lose the interest of aspiring students. It’s my opinion that the best education can be achieved with the use of exciting advanced technologies along with a guiding mentor or professor to assist, stimulate and challenge those trying to learn.”

Augustana has always had exceptional faculty, and now the university has the newest technology. n