PAN-O-PLY STORY & ART MICHIANA

Midwest museum of american art

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Kathy Hagen - Summer 2025

She wonders if she is an artist.

She says that she always wanted to be an artist. Even as a little girl, she thought about art and wondered about being an artist. For as long as she can remember, she has said, “I want to be an artist when I grow up.”

She laughingly admits today that sometimes she's perhaps not so much an artist as she is a collector of art supplies. The brushes, colors, papers, and other tools of the artist fill her studio. Her studio is upstairs in her lovely house, away from everything, by herself, but never alone.

Alan Larkin Winter 2025

Teaching was important to Larkin’s father and remains so for Alan Larkin today. Eugene Larkin taught design at the University of Minnesota-St. Paul, while son Alan Larkin over nearly forty years, taught a variety of art courses—from etching, lithography, and silkscreen to book art, paper-making, figure drawing, and artistic anatomy - as an associate professor in the Department of Fine Arts at Indiana University-South Bend, retiring eleven years ago. He still teaches workshops for arts organizations throughout Indiana.

“I like teaching,” he says. “It’s useful to organize your thoughts and write them down so you can share them with others. It’s a good way to learn yourself . . . to learn from problems in the studio and rationalize your way through them.” Sometimes his art students teach him tactical ideas, such as using a roller to block out dark areas on a canvas quickly.

Historic preservation is also of interest to Larkin, who owns four properties in South Bend, including a former Studebaker mansion and, next door to his home, a house he rents to visitors through Airbnb.

“Mostly I consider myself to have been absurdly lucky to have had a life in art,” says Larkin.

KATHARINE SCHMIDT - Rebel Fall 2024

A singular event in one’s life will set someone on a lifelong passion or career. For Katharine Schmidt, it took only one painting that spoke to her on a massive level to spark a career both teaching and creating art. 

Born in Indiana, Schmidt moved to Edwardsville, Illinois, at 13. There, she stayed and attended University of Illinois before transferring to the Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, graduating there in 1976 with a master’s in fine arts. After graduating, she moved to Seattle Washington, with her husband, who was stationed there as a United States Public Health Service member. She continued her education there, studying drawing at the Seattle Academy of Fine Arts – now called Gage Academy– and becoming a Foundations instructor there. 

Norbert Shimkus - Spring 2025

“I was the art kid.”

Shimkus, his parents, and sister lived in a modest bungalow on the southwest side of Chicago, close to Midway Airport. At that time, there were so few planes landing (one plane or fewer per day) that the children rode their bikes to Midway. The blimp would be parked there during the summer, and they could ride under the blimp. His sister did a little art, but she wound up in science education and has a passion for animals.

In elementary school, he realized he got attention by doing art, so he was motivated and kept on. “I was the art kid,” he says. At Kennedy High School, he had a comic strip in the school newspaper, joined the drama club doing scene design, worked on the newspaper, and majored in all the arts that the high school offered, which was a few classes in painting and drawing. When it came time to choose a college, his parents preferred that he attend a regular liberal arts college instead of an art school, to get a rounded education. He attended Illinois University and, nonetheless, majored in art and graphic design. At the daily college newspaper there was an ad department. He would design and illustrate ads and articles. A valuable experience for the career to come.