Greg Lookerse’s life goal is to help people understand the value of art and how it can help us connect with God. His mixed media drawings, installations and performances question the nature of sacred objects: dissecting them, rearranging them and often finding something new. He uses a variety of mediums, and collaborates on interdisciplinary projects such as the 2019 “Toward Convergence” performance with colleagues at Hope College, which included jazz music, poetry, dance and Greg’s visual art.

He teaches Basic Design, Design 2 and Time Based Art, and mentors Hope students involved in independent projects. Elsewhere, Greg has also taught courses in drawing, sculpture, new media and conceptual approaches to creative practices.

He’s a writer, too. His 2021 Notes from Underwater is a novel in the form of letters and more than 180 drawings.

Greg’s first inkling of his vocation as an artist was sparked by a surprise gift of art supplies during his childhood in California. As a college freshman he planned to study for the ministry, but he shifted gears upon discovering that college art classes are a fruitful context for exploring big ideas while making and talking about very small things on canvas or paper. After graduating as an art major he moved to Boston, where he earned a master’s degree in fine arts and exhibited his work extensively in solo, two-person and group exhibitions in the Boston area and internationally. He joined the faculty of Hope College in 2019. 

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Education

• MFA, School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, 2014
• BFA, Biola University, 2005

Selected Honors, Grants and Awards

• “Forging Ahead,” Nyenhuis Research Grant, Hope College, 2022
• “Art Can Help Faith,” Vital Worship Grant, Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, 2021
• Portal to the World Research Group Grant, American University in Paris, 2020
• Featured in “10 Contemporary Artists to Watch,” invaluable.com, 2016
• Emerging Artist Award, St. Botolph Club Foundation, 2016
• Traveling Fellowship, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2016
• T. Chan Sculpture Award, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, 2014

Selected Recent Exhibitions

• Here After, group exhibition at Bridge Projects (Santa Monica, CA), 2022 
• A Drawing/Dance Collaboration, Elevator Gallery at Hope College, 2021
• Artrageous! 34, group exhibition at Montserrat College (Beverly, MA), 2020
• Assisi International Contemporary Art Exhibition, Art Gallery Logge (Assisi, Italy), 2020
• Toward Convergence, Hope College, 2019
• Evocations, A R E A Gallery (Boston), 2018
• Literary Soil, Fruitlands Museum (Harvard, MA), 2018
• Communing With Silence, Piano Craft Gallery (Boston), 2016
• Everything is God to Me and Everything is Dust to Me, Kingston Gallery (Boston),  2015

View Artwork by Greg Lookerse

Publications

• Notes from Underwater, Scapegoat Press, 2021
• Artscope Magazine review, August 2017
• Bay State Banner review, July 2017
• Art New England Preview, July/August 2017

Outside the College

Greg enjoys hiking and foraging in West Michigan woods, sometimes with his Siberian Husky, Fawkes.