In a barely labeled white building on an iced-over stretch of 13th Avenue North, UND art professor Kim Fink's studio is nearly invisible, scrunched in along what feels like a deserted street. But inside, it's bursting with the treasures accumulated over a decades-long career. Near the doorway are file drawers nearly as tall as he is, stuffed with work done or half-finished by him and his colleagues; around the corner, masks from his collection silently watch over the room. Near the back of the studio is what looks to be the studio centerpiece: a long, flat table adorned with a pulley and belt and what looks to be the captain's wheel of a tall ship. It's a 19th century lithography press, one of only six like it in the country; Fink said he's heard this one came through Nazi-occupied Paris.
None of it will be here for much longer, though. Fink, 64, has taught art and printmaking at UND since 1999, but he plans to retire at the end of this semester-and all of his treasures are going with him. "I've kind of had it for teaching. It's getting hard," he said, adding that, after being on the job in California, Oregon, Nevada and now the Great Plains, it's simply time to be done. "Especially with the economics of the state right now. That made it a little bit easier." He and his wife, Suzanne, plan to move to the Portland, Ore., area, where he's tossed a few applications in for administrative jobs-though he said he's not too concerned about them. He and his wife plan to share their time with family, their travels and their art. None of that diminishes what he's felt he's had at UND, though. He speaks with enthusiasm about the artists he's connected to his students and the classes he's taken to Europe. One of his biggest hopes is the program he's built lasts after he's gone. "I loved it," Fink said of his career. "I had great opportunities I didn't even imagine when I came in." 'I was just always sketching' Fink, grew up in Reedley, in California's Central Valley, where his father was a farmer. Like many who are passionate about what they do, Fink doesn't pinpoint a moment when he fell in love with art; he just knew he loved it. "I was just always sketching and whatnot, and my mom was sort of a Sunday painter," Fink said, recalling how he followed her to watch. "I was just fascinated by the smell of the oil and the turpentine." Fink graduated from high school in 1969, and after a short stint at community college, he headed to Portland to study at what's now known as the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Students there started with the basics-basic design for a year, slowly building toward a final thesis. "I was really into mural painting," Fink recalled-especially Diego Rivera, the Mexican artist renowned for them. He painted a four-story-high mural at the local YWCA, and it's still there. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"2333883","attributes":{"alt":"Kim Fink, retiring UND professor and artist. Jesse Trelstad/ Grand Forks Herald","class":"media-image","height":"320","title":"","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"480"}}]] Fink met his wife during his third year at art school. They wanted to get married soon after they graduated, but there were a few roadblocks, not the least of which was where their lives took them. When Kim went to graduate school in Philadelphia, he soon found himself studying abroad in Italy, where he said it was almost impossible for two non-Catholics to tie the knot. "We went all over Europe trying to find a place," he said with a laugh. "We decided to wait until we went back." After the two married, they spent years in the San Francisco area, living as "poor church mice," Fink said, before returning to the Portland area. Fink had his sights set on teaching, but he was dashing from one classroom to the next in multiple cities on a cobbled-together schedule. In 1989, he got his break with a community college in Las Vegas. "They hired me like a week after the semester started. I had to throw all my stuff in my truck and head off and teach, and (Suzanne) basically had to move," he recalled. "She's never let me forget." Fink has a slew of stories from his time in Vegas, where he taught a wide range of art classes and continued to work on his own painting and lithography projects. One of his students was a bouncer at a strip club; another was a stripper-turned-nude model, who, after a few sessions, decided it wasn't for her. The college itself was on gang turf, Fink said, and he remembered seeing the members themselves slouching around campus. The move to UND came in 1999. Kim and Suzanne had had two children by now; their first, Kirsten, when they were still on the West Coast, and their second, Kathryn, when they were in Las Vegas. Kim describes the move as a chance to work at a research institution and an opportunity to move his family out of the city; the gang presence, for one, was starting to dictate what colors Kathryn could wear to school. Fink said he did his best to build a strong, healthy art program that regularly put students in contact with famous artists and took them abroad. His students have had the chance to work with the artist Peter Kuper behind the "Spy vs. Spy" comics; with Art Spiegelman, best known for the graphic novel "Maus;" and Colombian artist Oscar Munoz. His classes have traveled to Italy, Romania and New York. Some of his proudest accomplishments, he said, include connecting students to big-name artists. What he's been trying to do for years, he said, was create an environment where students were open to sharing and building creatively. "It was a struggle," he said. "For 16 years, I've been doing that with pretty limited successes, but there are still students who come back to me, and they say, 'I'm really proud of what we did.' " 'You want to do it right' Kim's work is on display through March 4 in the North Dakota Museum of Art, where different works adorn the walls just inside the entryway. Lois Wilde, a trustee on the museum's board of directors, said she loved the variety, which ranges from prints to three-dimensional pieces. "I was very impressed with his work," she said, singling out a piece called "Eagle." "It was a wonderful portrait of an eagle, and it was quite different from the rest of the work, so it stood out," she said. "It was easier to relate to than some of the more abstract pieces." That take on his pieces-that some are more esoteric-aligns with how Fink himself talks about some of his work. He jokes that there's a good chance he has attention deficit disorder; not only does it run in his family, he said, but oftentimes his work can look like a jumble of ideas. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"2333885","attributes":{"alt":"Kim Fink, retiring UND professor and artist. Jesse Trelstad/ Grand Forks Herald","class":"media-image","height":"320","title":"","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"480"}}]] "It's classic post-modern. It's bits and pieces of this and that from different things I see my work as visually what I experience every day," he said. "With the art, I sort of choose what I choose to put in there. Oftentimes, I see it as visual hieroglyphs; they're like visual words, and I build up different sentences that mean something." That, in turn, describes his take on "Haiku"-a part-lithograph, part-woodcut piece on display at the NDMOA-that includes a sort of progression of faces along the upper half of the frame, including a doll's head and a pixelated close-up view of a grown man, all hovering over a broad patch of blue water with a white hand outstretched above it. "It kind of reminded me of a haiku poem - there's something eloquent about the hand floating over the water," Fink said of the piece. "That just came to mind." Preparing for the show itself was more stressful than he might have accounted for at the time, Fink added, but well worth it. "I think it's great. I would probably say as far as my career, it's probably the best, most important thing I've done," he said. "It's not often you get to have a show in a museum-especially of this caliber, so I'm pretty proud of that fact. You want to do it right." Moving on Fink said after a lengthy career and a time to work to himself, he's ready to move on, though he's not sure he's done working altogether just yet. He's applying for some administrative posts in the Portland area, though he said he isn't too attached to getting a job. He and his wife plan to spend much of their time together. "We're going to set up a studio and do a lot of art and just travel," he said, adding that, though he hasn't seen much of Oregon, he knows he can rely on his wife's knowledge of the state. "We're going to hang out, camp, do that stuff." Fink's only concern is, especially during tough fiscal times at UND, his program might go away. "My worry is they'll cut that position," he said, mentioning possible hiring freezes. "It's not that I'm concerned about leaving a legacy. I just have seen this a lot here; faculty will build something up that's really interesting, and there's nothing there to catch that and carry on with that." But his sights are set firmly elsewhere now. It's likely he'll move this summer, and that means putting North Dakota behind him. "There's some things I'm going to not miss, like the wind," he joked. "But I'm going to miss the people."In a barely labeled white building on an iced-over stretch of 13th Avenue North, UND art professor Kim Fink's studio is nearly invisible, scrunched in along what feels like a deserted street. But inside, it's bursting with the treasures accumulated over a decades-long career. Near the doorway are file drawers nearly as tall as he is, stuffed with work done or half-finished by him and his colleagues; around the corner, masks from his collection silently watch over the room. Near the back of the studio is what looks to be the studio centerpiece: a long, flat table adorned with a pulley and belt and what looks to be the captain's wheel of a tall ship. It's a 19th century lithography press, one of only six like it in the country; Fink said he's heard this one came through Nazi-occupied Paris. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"2333881","attributes":{"alt":"Kim Fink turns the star wheel moving the pressure bar over the paper on a Brisset Star Wheel lithography press.","class":"media-image","height":"320","title":"","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"480"}}]] None of it will be here for much longer, though. Fink, 64, has taught art and printmaking at UND since 1999, but he plans to retire at the end of this semester-and all of his treasures are going with him. "I've kind of had it for teaching. It's getting hard," he said, adding that, after being on the job in California, Oregon, Nevada and now the Great Plains, it's simply time to be done. "Especially with the economics of the state right now. That made it a little bit easier." He and his wife, Suzanne, plan to move to the Portland, Ore., area, where he's tossed a few applications in for administrative jobs-though he said he's not too concerned about them. He and his wife plan to share their time with family, their travels and their art. None of that diminishes what he's felt he's had at UND, though. He speaks with enthusiasm about the artists he's connected to his students and the classes he's taken to Europe. One of his biggest hopes is the program he's built lasts after he's gone. "I loved it," Fink said of his career. "I had great opportunities I didn't even imagine when I came in." 'I was just always sketching' Fink, grew up in Reedley, in California's Central Valley, where his father was a farmer. Like many who are passionate about what they do, Fink doesn't pinpoint a moment when he fell in love with art; he just knew he loved it. "I was just always sketching and whatnot, and my mom was sort of a Sunday painter," Fink said, recalling how he followed her to watch. "I was just fascinated by the smell of the oil and the turpentine." Fink graduated from high school in 1969, and after a short stint at community college, he headed to Portland to study at what's now known as the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Students there started with the basics-basic design for a year, slowly building toward a final thesis. "I was really into mural painting," Fink recalled-especially Diego Rivera, the Mexican artist renowned for them. He painted a four-story-high mural at the local YWCA, and it's still there.
Fink met his wife during his third year at art school. They wanted to get married soon after they graduated, but there were a few roadblocks, not the least of which was where their lives took them. When Kim went to graduate school in Philadelphia, he soon found himself studying abroad in Italy, where he said it was almost impossible for two non-Catholics to tie the knot. "We went all over Europe trying to find a place," he said with a laugh. "We decided to wait until we went back." After the two married, they spent years in the San Francisco area, living as "poor church mice," Fink said, before returning to the Portland area. Fink had his sights set on teaching, but he was dashing from one classroom to the next in multiple cities on a cobbled-together schedule. In 1989, he got his break with a community college in Las Vegas. "They hired me like a week after the semester started. I had to throw all my stuff in my truck and head off and teach, and (Suzanne) basically had to move," he recalled. "She's never let me forget." Fink has a slew of stories from his time in Vegas, where he taught a wide range of art classes and continued to work on his own painting and lithography projects. One of his students was a bouncer at a strip club; another was a stripper-turned-nude model, who, after a few sessions, decided it wasn't for her. The college itself was on gang turf, Fink said, and he remembered seeing the members themselves slouching around campus. The move to UND came in 1999. Kim and Suzanne had had two children by now; their first, Kirsten, when they were still on the West Coast, and their second, Kathryn, when they were in Las Vegas. Kim describes the move as a chance to work at a research institution and an opportunity to move his family out of the city; the gang presence, for one, was starting to dictate what colors Kathryn could wear to school. Fink said he did his best to build a strong, healthy art program that regularly put students in contact with famous artists and took them abroad. His students have had the chance to work with the artist Peter Kuper behind the "Spy vs. Spy" comics; with Art Spiegelman, best known for the graphic novel "Maus;" and Colombian artist Oscar Munoz. His classes have traveled to Italy, Romania and New York. Some of his proudest accomplishments, he said, include connecting students to big-name artists. What he's been trying to do for years, he said, was create an environment where students were open to sharing and building creatively. "It was a struggle," he said. "For 16 years, I've been doing that with pretty limited successes, but there are still students who come back to me, and they say, 'I'm really proud of what we did.' " 'You want to do it right' Kim's work is on display through March 4 in the North Dakota Museum of Art, where different works adorn the walls just inside the entryway. Lois Wilde, a trustee on the museum's board of directors, said she loved the variety, which ranges from prints to three-dimensional pieces. "I was very impressed with his work," she said, singling out a piece called "Eagle." "It was a wonderful portrait of an eagle, and it was quite different from the rest of the work, so it stood out," she said. "It was easier to relate to than some of the more abstract pieces." That take on his pieces-that some are more esoteric-aligns with how Fink himself talks about some of his work. He jokes that there's a good chance he has attention deficit disorder; not only does it run in his family, he said, but oftentimes his work can look like a jumble of ideas. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"2333885","attributes":{"alt":"Kim Fink, retiring UND professor and artist. Jesse Trelstad/ Grand Forks Herald","class":"media-image","height":"320","title":"","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"480"}}]] "It's classic post-modern. It's bits and pieces of this and that from different things I see my work as visually what I experience every day," he said. "With the art, I sort of choose what I choose to put in there. Oftentimes, I see it as visual hieroglyphs; they're like visual words, and I build up different sentences that mean something." That, in turn, describes his take on "Haiku"-a part-lithograph, part-woodcut piece on display at the NDMOA-that includes a sort of progression of faces along the upper half of the frame, including a doll's head and a pixelated close-up view of a grown man, all hovering over a broad patch of blue water with a white hand outstretched above it. "It kind of reminded me of a haiku poem - there's something eloquent about the hand floating over the water," Fink said of the piece. "That just came to mind." Preparing for the show itself was more stressful than he might have accounted for at the time, Fink added, but well worth it. "I think it's great. I would probably say as far as my career, it's probably the best, most important thing I've done," he said. "It's not often you get to have a show in a museum-especially of this caliber, so I'm pretty proud of that fact. You want to do it right." Moving on Fink said after a lengthy career and a time to work to himself, he's ready to move on, though he's not sure he's done working altogether just yet. He's applying for some administrative posts in the Portland area, though he said he isn't too attached to getting a job. He and his wife plan to spend much of their time together. "We're going to set up a studio and do a lot of art and just travel," he said, adding that, though he hasn't seen much of Oregon, he knows he can rely on his wife's knowledge of the state. "We're going to hang out, camp, do that stuff." Fink's only concern is, especially during tough fiscal times at UND, his program might go away. "My worry is they'll cut that position," he said, mentioning possible hiring freezes. "It's not that I'm concerned about leaving a legacy. I just have seen this a lot here; faculty will build something up that's really interesting, and there's nothing there to catch that and carry on with that." But his sights are set firmly elsewhere now. It's likely he'll move this summer, and that means putting North Dakota behind him. "There's some things I'm going to not miss, like the wind," he joked. "But I'm going to miss the people."In a barely labeled white building on an iced-over stretch of 13th Avenue North, UND art professor Kim Fink's studio is nearly invisible, scrunched in along what feels like a deserted street. But inside, it's bursting with the treasures accumulated over a decades-long career. Near the doorway are file drawers nearly as tall as he is, stuffed with work done or half-finished by him and his colleagues; around the corner, masks from his collection silently watch over the room. Near the back of the studio is what looks to be the studio centerpiece: a long, flat table adorned with a pulley and belt and what looks to be the captain's wheel of a tall ship. It's a 19th century lithography press, one of only six like it in the country; Fink said he's heard this one came through Nazi-occupied Paris. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"2333881","attributes":{"alt":"Kim Fink turns the star wheel moving the pressure bar over the paper on a Brisset Star Wheel lithography press.","class":"media-image","height":"320","title":"","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"480"}}]] None of it will be here for much longer, though. Fink, 64, has taught art and printmaking at UND since 1999, but he plans to retire at the end of this semester-and all of his treasures are going with him. "I've kind of had it for teaching. It's getting hard," he said, adding that, after being on the job in California, Oregon, Nevada and now the Great Plains, it's simply time to be done. "Especially with the economics of the state right now. That made it a little bit easier." He and his wife, Suzanne, plan to move to the Portland, Ore., area, where he's tossed a few applications in for administrative jobs-though he said he's not too concerned about them. He and his wife plan to share their time with family, their travels and their art. None of that diminishes what he's felt he's had at UND, though. He speaks with enthusiasm about the artists he's connected to his students and the classes he's taken to Europe. One of his biggest hopes is the program he's built lasts after he's gone. "I loved it," Fink said of his career. "I had great opportunities I didn't even imagine when I came in." 'I was just always sketching' Fink, grew up in Reedley, in California's Central Valley, where his father was a farmer. Like many who are passionate about what they do, Fink doesn't pinpoint a moment when he fell in love with art; he just knew he loved it. "I was just always sketching and whatnot, and my mom was sort of a Sunday painter," Fink said, recalling how he followed her to watch. "I was just fascinated by the smell of the oil and the turpentine." Fink graduated from high school in 1969, and after a short stint at community college, he headed to Portland to study at what's now known as the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Students there started with the basics-basic design for a year, slowly building toward a final thesis. "I was really into mural painting," Fink recalled-especially Diego Rivera, the Mexican artist renowned for them. He painted a four-story-high mural at the local YWCA, and it's still there. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"2333883","attributes":{"alt":"Kim Fink, retiring UND professor and artist. Jesse Trelstad/ Grand Forks Herald","class":"media-image","height":"320","title":"","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"480"}}]] Fink met his wife during his third year at art school. They wanted to get married soon after they graduated, but there were a few roadblocks, not the least of which was where their lives took them. When Kim went to graduate school in Philadelphia, he soon found himself studying abroad in Italy, where he said it was almost impossible for two non-Catholics to tie the knot. "We went all over Europe trying to find a place," he said with a laugh. "We decided to wait until we went back." After the two married, they spent years in the San Francisco area, living as "poor church mice," Fink said, before returning to the Portland area. Fink had his sights set on teaching, but he was dashing from one classroom to the next in multiple cities on a cobbled-together schedule. In 1989, he got his break with a community college in Las Vegas. "They hired me like a week after the semester started. I had to throw all my stuff in my truck and head off and teach, and (Suzanne) basically had to move," he recalled. "She's never let me forget." Fink has a slew of stories from his time in Vegas, where he taught a wide range of art classes and continued to work on his own painting and lithography projects. One of his students was a bouncer at a strip club; another was a stripper-turned-nude model, who, after a few sessions, decided it wasn't for her. The college itself was on gang turf, Fink said, and he remembered seeing the members themselves slouching around campus. The move to UND came in 1999. Kim and Suzanne had had two children by now; their first, Kirsten, when they were still on the West Coast, and their second, Kathryn, when they were in Las Vegas. Kim describes the move as a chance to work at a research institution and an opportunity to move his family out of the city; the gang presence, for one, was starting to dictate what colors Kathryn could wear to school. Fink said he did his best to build a strong, healthy art program that regularly put students in contact with famous artists and took them abroad. His students have had the chance to work with the artist Peter Kuper behind the "Spy vs. Spy" comics; with Art Spiegelman, best known for the graphic novel "Maus;" and Colombian artist Oscar Munoz. His classes have traveled to Italy, Romania and New York. Some of his proudest accomplishments, he said, include connecting students to big-name artists. What he's been trying to do for years, he said, was create an environment where students were open to sharing and building creatively. "It was a struggle," he said. "For 16 years, I've been doing that with pretty limited successes, but there are still students who come back to me, and they say, 'I'm really proud of what we did.' " 'You want to do it right' Kim's work is on display through March 4 in the North Dakota Museum of Art, where different works adorn the walls just inside the entryway. Lois Wilde, a trustee on the museum's board of directors, said she loved the variety, which ranges from prints to three-dimensional pieces. "I was very impressed with his work," she said, singling out a piece called "Eagle." "It was a wonderful portrait of an eagle, and it was quite different from the rest of the work, so it stood out," she said. "It was easier to relate to than some of the more abstract pieces." That take on his pieces-that some are more esoteric-aligns with how Fink himself talks about some of his work. He jokes that there's a good chance he has attention deficit disorder; not only does it run in his family, he said, but oftentimes his work can look like a jumble of ideas.
"It's classic post-modern. It's bits and pieces of this and that from different things I see my work as visually what I experience every day," he said. "With the art, I sort of choose what I choose to put in there. Oftentimes, I see it as visual hieroglyphs; they're like visual words, and I build up different sentences that mean something." That, in turn, describes his take on "Haiku"-a part-lithograph, part-woodcut piece on display at the NDMOA-that includes a sort of progression of faces along the upper half of the frame, including a doll's head and a pixelated close-up view of a grown man, all hovering over a broad patch of blue water with a white hand outstretched above it. "It kind of reminded me of a haiku poem - there's something eloquent about the hand floating over the water," Fink said of the piece. "That just came to mind." Preparing for the show itself was more stressful than he might have accounted for at the time, Fink added, but well worth it. "I think it's great. I would probably say as far as my career, it's probably the best, most important thing I've done," he said. "It's not often you get to have a show in a museum-especially of this caliber, so I'm pretty proud of that fact. You want to do it right." Moving on Fink said after a lengthy career and a time to work to himself, he's ready to move on, though he's not sure he's done working altogether just yet. He's applying for some administrative posts in the Portland area, though he said he isn't too attached to getting a job. He and his wife plan to spend much of their time together. "We're going to set up a studio and do a lot of art and just travel," he said, adding that, though he hasn't seen much of Oregon, he knows he can rely on his wife's knowledge of the state. "We're going to hang out, camp, do that stuff." Fink's only concern is, especially during tough fiscal times at UND, his program might go away. "My worry is they'll cut that position," he said, mentioning possible hiring freezes. "It's not that I'm concerned about leaving a legacy. I just have seen this a lot here; faculty will build something up that's really interesting, and there's nothing there to catch that and carry on with that." But his sights are set firmly elsewhere now. It's likely he'll move this summer, and that means putting North Dakota behind him. "There's some things I'm going to not miss, like the wind," he joked. "But I'm going to miss the people."In a barely labeled white building on an iced-over stretch of 13th Avenue North, UND art professor Kim Fink's studio is nearly invisible, scrunched in along what feels like a deserted street.But inside, it's bursting with the treasures accumulated over a decades-long career. Near the doorway are file drawers nearly as tall as he is, stuffed with work done or half-finished by him and his colleagues; around the corner, masks from his collection silently watch over the room.Near the back of the studio is what looks to be the studio centerpiece: a long, flat table adorned with a pulley and belt and what looks to be the captain's wheel of a tall ship. It's a 19th century lithographypress, one of only six like it in the country; Fink said he's heard this one came through Nazi-occupied Paris.
None of it will be here for much longer, though. Fink, 64, has taught art and printmaking at UND since 1999, but he plans to retire at the end of this semester-and all of his treasures are going with him."I've kind of had it for teaching. It's getting hard," he said, adding that, after being on the job in California, Oregon, Nevada and now the Great Plains, it's simply time to be done. "Especially with the economics of the state right now. That made it a little bit easier."He and his wife, Suzanne, plan to move to the Portland, Ore., area, where he's tossed a few applications in for administrative jobs-though he said he's not too concerned about them. He and his wife plan to share their time with family, their travels and their art.None of that diminishes what he's felt he's had at UND, though. He speaks with enthusiasm about the artists he's connected to his students and the classes he's taken to Europe. One of his biggest hopes is the program he's built lasts after he's gone."I loved it," Fink said of his career. "I had great opportunities I didn't even imagine when I came in." 'I was just always sketching'Fink, grew up in Reedley, in California's Central Valley, where his father was a farmer. Like many who are passionate about what they do, Fink doesn't pinpoint a moment when he fell in love with art; he just knew he loved it."I was just always sketching and whatnot, and my mom was sort of a Sunday painter," Fink said, recalling how he followed her to watch. "I was just fascinated by the smell of the oil and the turpentine."Fink graduated from high school in 1969, and after a short stint at community college, he headed to Portland to study at what's now known as the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Students there started with the basics-basic design for a year, slowly building toward a final thesis."I was really into mural painting," Fink recalled-especially Diego Rivera, the Mexican artist renowned for them. He painted a four-story-high mural at the local YWCA, and it's still there.[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"2333883","attributes":{"alt":"Kim Fink, retiring UND professor and artist. Jesse Trelstad/ Grand Forks Herald","class":"media-image","height":"320","title":"","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"480"}}]] Fink met his wife during his third year at art school. They wanted to get married soon after they graduated, but there were a few roadblocks, not the least of which was where their lives took them.When Kim went to graduate school in Philadelphia, he soon found himself studying abroad in Italy, where he said it was almost impossible for two non-Catholics to tie the knot."We went all over Europe trying to find a place," he said with a laugh. "We decided to wait until we went back."After the two married, they spent years in the San Francisco area, living as "poor church mice," Fink said, before returning to the Portland area. Fink had his sights set on teaching, but he was dashing from one classroom to the next in multiple cities on a cobbled-together schedule. In 1989, he got his break with a community college in Las Vegas."They hired me like a week after the semester started. I had to throw all my stuff in my truck and head off and teach, and (Suzanne) basically had to move," he recalled. "She's never let me forget."Fink has a slew of stories from his time in Vegas, where he taught a wide range of art classes and continued to work on his own painting and lithography projects. One of his students was a bouncer at a strip club; another was a stripper-turned-nude model, who, after a few sessions, decided it wasn't for her. The college itself was on gang turf, Fink said, and he remembered seeing the members themselves slouching around campus.The move to UND came in 1999. Kim and Suzanne had had two children by now; their first, Kirsten, when they were still on the West Coast, and their second, Kathryn, when they were in Las Vegas. Kim describes the move as a chance to work at a research institution and an opportunity to move his family out of the city; the gang presence, for one, was starting to dictate what colors Kathryn could wear to school.Fink said he did his best to build a strong, healthy art program that regularly put students in contact with famous artists and took them abroad. His students have had the chance to work with the artist Peter Kuper behind the "Spy vs. Spy" comics; with Art Spiegelman, best known for the graphic novel "Maus;" and Colombian artist Oscar Munoz. His classes have traveled to Italy, Romania and New York.Some of his proudest accomplishments, he said, include connecting students to big-name artists. What he's been trying to do for years, he said, was create an environment where students were open to sharing and building creatively."It was a struggle," he said. "For 16 years, I've been doing that with pretty limited successes, but there are still students who come back to me, and they say, 'I'm really proud of what we did.' "'You want to do it right'Kim's work is on display through March 4 in the North Dakota Museum of Art, where different works adorn the walls just inside the entryway. Lois Wilde, a trustee on the museum's board of directors, said she loved the variety, which ranges from prints to three-dimensional pieces."I was very impressed with his work," she said, singling out a piece called "Eagle.""It was a wonderful portrait of an eagle, and it was quite different from the rest of the work, so it stood out," she said. "It was easier to relate to than some of the more abstract pieces."That take on his pieces-that some are more esoteric-aligns with how Fink himself talks about some of his work. He jokes that there's a good chance he has attention deficit disorder; not only does it run in his family, he said, but oftentimes his work can look like a jumble of ideas.[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"2333885","attributes":{"alt":"Kim Fink, retiring UND professor and artist. Jesse Trelstad/ Grand Forks Herald","class":"media-image","height":"320","title":"","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"480"}}]] "It's classic post-modern. It's bits and pieces of this and that from different things I see my work as visually what I experience every day," he said. "With the art, I sort of choose what I choose to put in there. Oftentimes, I see it as visual hieroglyphs; they're like visual words, and I build up different sentences that mean something."That, in turn, describes his take on "Haiku"-a part-lithograph, part-woodcut piece on display at the NDMOA-that includes a sort of progression of faces along the upper half of the frame, including a doll's head and a pixelated close-up view of a grown man, all hovering over a broad patch of blue water with a white hand outstretched above it."It kind of reminded me of a haiku poem - there's something eloquent about the hand floating over the water," Fink said of the piece. "That just came to mind."Preparing for the show itself was more stressful than he might have accounted for at the time, Fink added, but well worth it."I think it's great. I would probably say as far as my career, it's probably the best, most important thing I've done," he said. "It's not often you get to have a show in a museum-especially of this caliber, so I'm pretty proud of that fact. You want to do it right."Moving onFink said after a lengthy career and a time to work to himself, he's ready to move on, though he's not sure he's done working altogether just yet. He's applying for some administrative posts in the Portland area, though he said he isn't too attached to getting a job. He and his wife plan to spend much of their time together."We're going to set up a studio and do a lot of art and just travel," he said, adding that, though he hasn't seen much of Oregon, he knows he can rely on his wife's knowledge of the state. "We're going to hang out, camp, do that stuff."Fink's only concern is, especially during tough fiscal times at UND, his program might go away."My worry is they'll cut that position," he said, mentioning possible hiring freezes. "It's not that I'm concerned about leaving a legacy. I just have seen this a lot here; faculty will build something up that's really interesting, and there's nothing there to catch that and carry on with that."But his sights are set firmly elsewhere now. It's likely he'll move this summer, and that means putting North Dakota behind him."There's some things I'm going to not miss, like the wind," he joked. "But I'm going to miss the people."In a barely labeled white building on an iced-over stretch of 13th Avenue North, UND art professor Kim Fink's studio is nearly invisible, scrunched in along what feels like a deserted street.But inside, it's bursting with the treasures accumulated over a decades-long career. Near the doorway are file drawers nearly as tall as he is, stuffed with work done or half-finished by him and his colleagues; around the corner, masks from his collection silently watch over the room.Near the back of the studio is what looks to be the studio centerpiece: a long, flat table adorned with a pulley and belt and what looks to be the captain's wheel of a tall ship. It's a 19th century lithographypress, one of only six like it in the country; Fink said he's heard this one came through Nazi-occupied Paris.[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"2333881","attributes":{"alt":"Kim Fink turns the star wheel moving the pressure bar over the paper on a Brisset Star Wheel lithography press.","class":"media-image","height":"320","title":"","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"480"}}]] None of it will be here for much longer, though. Fink, 64, has taught art and printmaking at UND since 1999, but he plans to retire at the end of this semester-and all of his treasures are going with him."I've kind of had it for teaching. It's getting hard," he said, adding that, after being on the job in California, Oregon, Nevada and now the Great Plains, it's simply time to be done. "Especially with the economics of the state right now. That made it a little bit easier."He and his wife, Suzanne, plan to move to the Portland, Ore., area, where he's tossed a few applications in for administrative jobs-though he said he's not too concerned about them. He and his wife plan to share their time with family, their travels and their art.None of that diminishes what he's felt he's had at UND, though. He speaks with enthusiasm about the artists he's connected to his students and the classes he's taken to Europe. One of his biggest hopes is the program he's built lasts after he's gone."I loved it," Fink said of his career. "I had great opportunities I didn't even imagine when I came in." 'I was just always sketching'Fink, grew up in Reedley, in California's Central Valley, where his father was a farmer. Like many who are passionate about what they do, Fink doesn't pinpoint a moment when he fell in love with art; he just knew he loved it."I was just always sketching and whatnot, and my mom was sort of a Sunday painter," Fink said, recalling how he followed her to watch. "I was just fascinated by the smell of the oil and the turpentine."Fink graduated from high school in 1969, and after a short stint at community college, he headed to Portland to study at what's now known as the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Students there started with the basics-basic design for a year, slowly building toward a final thesis."I was really into mural painting," Fink recalled-especially Diego Rivera, the Mexican artist renowned for them. He painted a four-story-high mural at the local YWCA, and it's still there.
Fink met his wife during his third year at art school. They wanted to get married soon after they graduated, but there were a few roadblocks, not the least of which was where their lives took them.When Kim went to graduate school in Philadelphia, he soon found himself studying abroad in Italy, where he said it was almost impossible for two non-Catholics to tie the knot."We went all over Europe trying to find a place," he said with a laugh. "We decided to wait until we went back."After the two married, they spent years in the San Francisco area, living as "poor church mice," Fink said, before returning to the Portland area. Fink had his sights set on teaching, but he was dashing from one classroom to the next in multiple cities on a cobbled-together schedule. In 1989, he got his break with a community college in Las Vegas."They hired me like a week after the semester started. I had to throw all my stuff in my truck and head off and teach, and (Suzanne) basically had to move," he recalled. "She's never let me forget."Fink has a slew of stories from his time in Vegas, where he taught a wide range of art classes and continued to work on his own painting and lithography projects. One of his students was a bouncer at a strip club; another was a stripper-turned-nude model, who, after a few sessions, decided it wasn't for her. The college itself was on gang turf, Fink said, and he remembered seeing the members themselves slouching around campus.The move to UND came in 1999. Kim and Suzanne had had two children by now; their first, Kirsten, when they were still on the West Coast, and their second, Kathryn, when they were in Las Vegas. Kim describes the move as a chance to work at a research institution and an opportunity to move his family out of the city; the gang presence, for one, was starting to dictate what colors Kathryn could wear to school.Fink said he did his best to build a strong, healthy art program that regularly put students in contact with famous artists and took them abroad. His students have had the chance to work with the artist Peter Kuper behind the "Spy vs. Spy" comics; with Art Spiegelman, best known for the graphic novel "Maus;" and Colombian artist Oscar Munoz. His classes have traveled to Italy, Romania and New York.Some of his proudest accomplishments, he said, include connecting students to big-name artists. What he's been trying to do for years, he said, was create an environment where students were open to sharing and building creatively."It was a struggle," he said. "For 16 years, I've been doing that with pretty limited successes, but there are still students who come back to me, and they say, 'I'm really proud of what we did.' "'You want to do it right'Kim's work is on display through March 4 in the North Dakota Museum of Art, where different works adorn the walls just inside the entryway. Lois Wilde, a trustee on the museum's board of directors, said she loved the variety, which ranges from prints to three-dimensional pieces."I was very impressed with his work," she said, singling out a piece called "Eagle.""It was a wonderful portrait of an eagle, and it was quite different from the rest of the work, so it stood out," she said. "It was easier to relate to than some of the more abstract pieces."That take on his pieces-that some are more esoteric-aligns with how Fink himself talks about some of his work. He jokes that there's a good chance he has attention deficit disorder; not only does it run in his family, he said, but oftentimes his work can look like a jumble of ideas.[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"2333885","attributes":{"alt":"Kim Fink, retiring UND professor and artist. Jesse Trelstad/ Grand Forks Herald","class":"media-image","height":"320","title":"","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"480"}}]] "It's classic post-modern. It's bits and pieces of this and that from different things I see my work as visually what I experience every day," he said. "With the art, I sort of choose what I choose to put in there. Oftentimes, I see it as visual hieroglyphs; they're like visual words, and I build up different sentences that mean something."That, in turn, describes his take on "Haiku"-a part-lithograph, part-woodcut piece on display at the NDMOA-that includes a sort of progression of faces along the upper half of the frame, including a doll's head and a pixelated close-up view of a grown man, all hovering over a broad patch of blue water with a white hand outstretched above it."It kind of reminded me of a haiku poem - there's something eloquent about the hand floating over the water," Fink said of the piece. "That just came to mind."Preparing for the show itself was more stressful than he might have accounted for at the time, Fink added, but well worth it."I think it's great. I would probably say as far as my career, it's probably the best, most important thing I've done," he said. "It's not often you get to have a show in a museum-especially of this caliber, so I'm pretty proud of that fact. You want to do it right."Moving onFink said after a lengthy career and a time to work to himself, he's ready to move on, though he's not sure he's done working altogether just yet. He's applying for some administrative posts in the Portland area, though he said he isn't too attached to getting a job. He and his wife plan to spend much of their time together."We're going to set up a studio and do a lot of art and just travel," he said, adding that, though he hasn't seen much of Oregon, he knows he can rely on his wife's knowledge of the state. "We're going to hang out, camp, do that stuff."Fink's only concern is, especially during tough fiscal times at UND, his program might go away."My worry is they'll cut that position," he said, mentioning possible hiring freezes. "It's not that I'm concerned about leaving a legacy. I just have seen this a lot here; faculty will build something up that's really interesting, and there's nothing there to catch that and carry on with that."But his sights are set firmly elsewhere now. It's likely he'll move this summer, and that means putting North Dakota behind him."There's some things I'm going to not miss, like the wind," he joked. "But I'm going to miss the people."In a barely labeled white building on an iced-over stretch of 13th Avenue North, UND art professor Kim Fink's studio is nearly invisible, scrunched in along what feels like a deserted street.But inside, it's bursting with the treasures accumulated over a decades-long career. Near the doorway are file drawers nearly as tall as he is, stuffed with work done or half-finished by him and his colleagues; around the corner, masks from his collection silently watch over the room.Near the back of the studio is what looks to be the studio centerpiece: a long, flat table adorned with a pulley and belt and what looks to be the captain's wheel of a tall ship. It's a 19th century lithographypress, one of only six like it in the country; Fink said he's heard this one came through Nazi-occupied Paris.[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"2333881","attributes":{"alt":"Kim Fink turns the star wheel moving the pressure bar over the paper on a Brisset Star Wheel lithography press.","class":"media-image","height":"320","title":"","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"480"}}]] None of it will be here for much longer, though. Fink, 64, has taught art and printmaking at UND since 1999, but he plans to retire at the end of this semester-and all of his treasures are going with him."I've kind of had it for teaching. It's getting hard," he said, adding that, after being on the job in California, Oregon, Nevada and now the Great Plains, it's simply time to be done. "Especially with the economics of the state right now. That made it a little bit easier."He and his wife, Suzanne, plan to move to the Portland, Ore., area, where he's tossed a few applications in for administrative jobs-though he said he's not too concerned about them. He and his wife plan to share their time with family, their travels and their art.None of that diminishes what he's felt he's had at UND, though. He speaks with enthusiasm about the artists he's connected to his students and the classes he's taken to Europe. One of his biggest hopes is the program he's built lasts after he's gone."I loved it," Fink said of his career. "I had great opportunities I didn't even imagine when I came in." 'I was just always sketching'Fink, grew up in Reedley, in California's Central Valley, where his father was a farmer. Like many who are passionate about what they do, Fink doesn't pinpoint a moment when he fell in love with art; he just knew he loved it."I was just always sketching and whatnot, and my mom was sort of a Sunday painter," Fink said, recalling how he followed her to watch. "I was just fascinated by the smell of the oil and the turpentine."Fink graduated from high school in 1969, and after a short stint at community college, he headed to Portland to study at what's now known as the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Students there started with the basics-basic design for a year, slowly building toward a final thesis."I was really into mural painting," Fink recalled-especially Diego Rivera, the Mexican artist renowned for them. He painted a four-story-high mural at the local YWCA, and it's still there.[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"2333883","attributes":{"alt":"Kim Fink, retiring UND professor and artist. Jesse Trelstad/ Grand Forks Herald","class":"media-image","height":"320","title":"","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"480"}}]] Fink met his wife during his third year at art school. They wanted to get married soon after they graduated, but there were a few roadblocks, not the least of which was where their lives took them.When Kim went to graduate school in Philadelphia, he soon found himself studying abroad in Italy, where he said it was almost impossible for two non-Catholics to tie the knot."We went all over Europe trying to find a place," he said with a laugh. "We decided to wait until we went back."After the two married, they spent years in the San Francisco area, living as "poor church mice," Fink said, before returning to the Portland area. Fink had his sights set on teaching, but he was dashing from one classroom to the next in multiple cities on a cobbled-together schedule. In 1989, he got his break with a community college in Las Vegas."They hired me like a week after the semester started. I had to throw all my stuff in my truck and head off and teach, and (Suzanne) basically had to move," he recalled. "She's never let me forget."Fink has a slew of stories from his time in Vegas, where he taught a wide range of art classes and continued to work on his own painting and lithography projects. One of his students was a bouncer at a strip club; another was a stripper-turned-nude model, who, after a few sessions, decided it wasn't for her. The college itself was on gang turf, Fink said, and he remembered seeing the members themselves slouching around campus.The move to UND came in 1999. Kim and Suzanne had had two children by now; their first, Kirsten, when they were still on the West Coast, and their second, Kathryn, when they were in Las Vegas. Kim describes the move as a chance to work at a research institution and an opportunity to move his family out of the city; the gang presence, for one, was starting to dictate what colors Kathryn could wear to school.Fink said he did his best to build a strong, healthy art program that regularly put students in contact with famous artists and took them abroad. His students have had the chance to work with the artist Peter Kuper behind the "Spy vs. Spy" comics; with Art Spiegelman, best known for the graphic novel "Maus;" and Colombian artist Oscar Munoz. His classes have traveled to Italy, Romania and New York.Some of his proudest accomplishments, he said, include connecting students to big-name artists. What he's been trying to do for years, he said, was create an environment where students were open to sharing and building creatively."It was a struggle," he said. "For 16 years, I've been doing that with pretty limited successes, but there are still students who come back to me, and they say, 'I'm really proud of what we did.' "'You want to do it right'Kim's work is on display through March 4 in the North Dakota Museum of Art, where different works adorn the walls just inside the entryway. Lois Wilde, a trustee on the museum's board of directors, said she loved the variety, which ranges from prints to three-dimensional pieces."I was very impressed with his work," she said, singling out a piece called "Eagle.""It was a wonderful portrait of an eagle, and it was quite different from the rest of the work, so it stood out," she said. "It was easier to relate to than some of the more abstract pieces."That take on his pieces-that some are more esoteric-aligns with how Fink himself talks about some of his work. He jokes that there's a good chance he has attention deficit disorder; not only does it run in his family, he said, but oftentimes his work can look like a jumble of ideas.
"It's classic post-modern. It's bits and pieces of this and that from different things I see my work as visually what I experience every day," he said. "With the art, I sort of choose what I choose to put in there. Oftentimes, I see it as visual hieroglyphs; they're like visual words, and I build up different sentences that mean something."That, in turn, describes his take on "Haiku"-a part-lithograph, part-woodcut piece on display at the NDMOA-that includes a sort of progression of faces along the upper half of the frame, including a doll's head and a pixelated close-up view of a grown man, all hovering over a broad patch of blue water with a white hand outstretched above it."It kind of reminded me of a haiku poem - there's something eloquent about the hand floating over the water," Fink said of the piece. "That just came to mind."Preparing for the show itself was more stressful than he might have accounted for at the time, Fink added, but well worth it."I think it's great. I would probably say as far as my career, it's probably the best, most important thing I've done," he said. "It's not often you get to have a show in a museum-especially of this caliber, so I'm pretty proud of that fact. You want to do it right."Moving onFink said after a lengthy career and a time to work to himself, he's ready to move on, though he's not sure he's done working altogether just yet. He's applying for some administrative posts in the Portland area, though he said he isn't too attached to getting a job. He and his wife plan to spend much of their time together."We're going to set up a studio and do a lot of art and just travel," he said, adding that, though he hasn't seen much of Oregon, he knows he can rely on his wife's knowledge of the state. "We're going to hang out, camp, do that stuff."Fink's only concern is, especially during tough fiscal times at UND, his program might go away."My worry is they'll cut that position," he said, mentioning possible hiring freezes. "It's not that I'm concerned about leaving a legacy. I just have seen this a lot here; faculty will build something up that's really interesting, and there's nothing there to catch that and carry on with that."But his sights are set firmly elsewhere now. It's likely he'll move this summer, and that means putting North Dakota behind him."There's some things I'm going to not miss, like the wind," he joked. "But I'm going to miss the people."
