Press (Artist)

Local Ceramicist Featured in Lafayette Exhibit

LILA FIEREK, THE GOSHEN NEWS

August 12, 2023

This can’t miss exhibition features some of the most creative art that you’ll ever see. Marvin Bartel devoted his career to bringing creativity in youth from preschoolers to college students, and his work reflects his devotion.

Passion For Clay

DAN MESSIC, THE GOSHEN NEWS

February 2023

GOSHEN — Seeds of ceramics are taking root in Michiana.

In the fall, the Northern Indiana Clay Alliance was established with 501(c)(3) nonprofit status. “We’re still getting ourselves organized, but we want to try to provide opportunity not only for the artists that live here, but we want to make sure that we’re bringing people in from beyond,” said co-founder Trevor Daugherty.

Local potter finds inspiration in functional art

LEANDRA BEABOUT, THE GOSHEN NEWS

September 2017

GOSHEN — To visit Marvin Bartel’s working studio is to visit another world. A world where a lump of clay can become a delicate teapot or a dead fish, where birds feed out of the mouth of a giant ceramic face, where glazed pots swing from the ceiling on thin chains alongside gourds and drying grapevines from the garden.

“I like to make stuff,” Bartel said as he stood outside his studio Tuesday morning, a handmade mug of steaming coffee in hand. This is an understatement.

You Should Know: Marvin Bartel

SHERRY VAN ARSDALL THE GOSHEN NEWS

July 2013

“I’m a designer and I make stuff. I built a studio in 1980 and designed our house. I had a builder from the area build it. It was a good experience,” he said. “We needed a dictionary stand so I made it from stoneware. I make a lot of things out of clay. The house includes four sinks that I made. It has handhewn beams and other materials I salvaged from the historic Kundred Gladiola Farm barn near Goshen. The studio is entirely built from locally grown lumber.”

Marvin Bartel, Goshen, shows some of the pottery pieces he will have for sale at his home studio this weekend.

SAM HOUSEHOLDER | THE GOSHEN NEWS

Pottery Tour Reflects Growing Art Culture

AMANDA GRAY | THE GOSHEN NEWS

September 28, 2012

GOSHEN — Locals and out-of-towners will visit the artistic spots of Goshen during the first Michiana Pottery Tour Saturday.

“There are several artists in the area working full-time,” Justin Rothshank, one of the tour’s organizers, said. “We’ve hit a critical mass of artists in the area where we support each others’ businesses and help with studio shows.” Rothshank said the pottery tour is following the lead of other tours in nearby areas, and the organizers hope to have enough success to make this an annual event.

Featured Artist: Marvin Bartel

Michiana Pottery Tour

Marvin Bartel was a member of the art faculty at Goshen College from 1970 through 2002. He taught courses in art education, ceramics, photography, drafting and architectural design.

Dr. Bartel continues as a consultant, lecturer, workshop and seminar leader in art education and in creativity education. His essays are posted at his Art Education website. He continues to be an active artist, writer, and traveler.

Marvin Bartel arrived at Goshen College in 1970 with an M.A. and Ph.D. in Arts Education, as well as a good number of years of experience teaching various mediums at both the high school and college level. In reminiscing about his experiences, Marvin speaks of a lifelong passion for teaching his students how to be creative:

“What they really need is the ability to think, and know how to ask questions, and how to come up with ideas, and how to persist, and how to hang in there when the going is tough.” Marvin’s approach to accomplishing this is multifaceted, and included a critiquing practice which helped his students learn to evolve ideas out of their own work (rather than imitating others), as well as a calculated structure of coursework which left students curious and eager to take more courses after the first semester.

Marvin Bartel: Teacher, Artist, Innovator

Chad Martin Ceramics Monthly

September 2004

When I was in high school, my teacher took us on a field trip to visit Bartel’s house. As we approached the driveway, I spotted his handmade mailbox, crafted from wheel-thrown forms and a big cork stopper. We continued through the tour, encountering more clay objects than I could ever have imagined – tile countertops, handmade sinks and toilets, clay swivel chairs, and of course, many pots. My understanding of art and one’s ability to test creativity were blown wide open. Here was a man showing me that one can create nearly any object from nearly anything, using a creative spirit and a full understanding of the material. It was a valuable lesson at an impossible time for me.

Ceramics Monthly Article

IT TAKES NERVE to be an artist, according to Marvin Bartel, Goshen, Indiana. Like a farmer or businessman, he said, the artist must risk failure in the creation of something new.

Marvin, art profession at Goshen College, considers himself first and foremost a teacher. But the production of art, he feels, is essential to his teaching. His artistic specialty is ceramics – porcelain, ovenware, and stoneware. His work, such as the silk-screening of photographic images on clay, represents a cutting edge within the ceramics field.

Although Marvin liked to draw and make things since early childhood, he was not aware of the meaning of art until he began to teach it as an adult. “Through childhood and adolescence my understanding was that if I could produce the likeness of something, I was an artist.”

His understanding of art is still evolving, he said, but he now claims that a basic function of art is to help us recognize our real selves.

“If an artist is able to work without restraints, he is often able to give us insights into who we are,” said Marvin. “On the national level, for example, a celebrated artist, Robert Rauschenberg, has made a career out of compositions made up of discarded material. His art offers a striking commentary on who we are as a society, whether we want to see it or not.”

Are artists within the church able to critique the church as Rauschenberg has society on the national level?”

Menno Work By Bartel

Goshen College Record
By David Hiebert

January 28, 1972

Marvin Bartel, associate professor of art, has recently completed six pieces of pottery using a silkscreen image of Menno Simons. The project utilized a $500 Funk Lecture Grant, given by the Conrad Grebel Lecture Committee.

The pieces incorporate an enlarged image taken from an engraving of Menno Simons by Christoffel van Sichem, published in the seventeenth century.

The pieces range from the large, 29″-high slab construction called “A Box for Branches with Menno Simons Image” to thee medium-sized, 14″-high, 9.5″-diameter “Covered Jar with Menno Simons Image.”

GC Profs At Gallery: A Preview

The Record, Goshen College
By Don Yost

October 1970

An Alaskan Indian poncho, a duck, and a computer? All served as inspiration for three artists whose work will be displayed in the 1970 Goshen College Faculty Art Exhibit. The exhibit, which opens Sunday, October 4, will feature the fabric prints and woven tapestries of Alta Hertzler, the ceramic work of Marvin Bartel, and the sculpture graphic prints, and painting of Abner Hershberger. Their entries will represent work done this year – a year that in each case has been one of intensive production. One may see in these entries, then, both the most recent thought and inspiration of each artist and current innovations in the art world at large.

Ghostly Hands

The most innovative work to be displayed by Professor Bartel combines three different methods of shaping clay – molding, throwing, and sculpturing “Pot Demonstration in Four Stages” is an almost surrealist comment about the process of art. Lids and vase forms exist as arms of the ghostly hands demonstrating the techniques of “throwing” forming a piece of clay with the use of a large spinning wheel.