Gregory Constantine

Greg Constantine has always mixed humor with academic information of integrity in the lectures given during his 43 years as a professor of art at Andrews University, as well as dozens of off-campus presentations in the United States and Europe. During this same period, he directed 15 summer sessions to European museums and cathedrals. He journeyed an additional 19 times to Europe for his own enrichment or in connection with his several art exhibits and publication debuts. Constantine was born and raised in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, and earned his Bachelor of Arts from Andrews in 1960, then his Master of Fine Arts degree from Michigan State University in 1968. He has been referred to as an evangelist of art, but his mission is to introduce people to his world of art and artists, not necessarily to convert them into being artists.
The Poetic Licenses are a play on words, and most viewers, when confronted by these groupings, will at first see a random juxtaposition of weathered automobile plates from various countries and states. They refer to the phenomenon of ubiquitous so-called “vanity” plates, with the exception of several which have been joined together to form full statements. Most of the statements are those of artists about art and some are humorous. It may be noted that each plate is rendered as a convincing entity, (although created from vacuum-formed styrene) and the groupings appear to be an assemblage of found objects. The license plate format is that of objects of utility transformed into a functional object wearing the mantle of “high art”. They open another territory in the development of Text art.