Living as a Work of Art

One of the common themes threaded throughout artist Rick Beerhorst’s artwork is developing a new way of seeing, exhibited in paintings of subjects with their eyes covered.

It’s a theme that resonates not only in Beerhorst’s paintings but also in the way that he and his wife Brenda raise their family. Along with their six children ranging in age from five to 17, Rick and Brenda Beerhorst chooses to see and experience life in a non-traditional way.

A family of artists – Rick is a gifted painter, Brenda is a talented textile artist who specializes in hooked rugs – they share their creative talents with their children, making no distinction between art and life. The family sells some of their artwork at the Fulton Street Farmers Market, but only brings what they are able to pull in a wagon.

They haven’t owned a car in five years, opting instead to walk, bike, take public transportation or receive assistance from friends and neighbors when necessary. The children don’t attend school, and instead learn about life, human relationships and art on a daily basis. 

“We unschool our children," says Rick, 49. "We don’t recreate school at home.  We believe living and learning naturally go together and that you can trust children and their inborn sense of wonder and curiosity to take them into discovering their world which is itself the seat of learning.” 

Setting Off on a Journey

Rick and Brenda met during the 1980s punk music scene while they were each pursuing art at Calvin College and Kendall College of Art and Design, respectively. “I never took an academic position because I wanted to really be pressed into the marketplace,” says Rick. “But I didn’t know anybody like that and didn’t have a model for pursing art in anything other than a teaching capacity.”

So Rick and Brenda set off on a journey together to pursue a living as working artists, painting their own picture of what an artistic lifestyle should look like. They held art shows in the home, hanging their art on the walls and inviting friends to attend.

“As the children started coming along, we wanted to knit them into our lives,” says Rick. “Our parents had conventional 9-to-5 jobs, and we didn’t want to do that. We wanted a life where we’d be more integrated.”
The young couple realized that they could seamlessly include their children into their artistic lifestyle. “We began by setting the kids’ drawings out at one of our art shows and people started buying them,” says Rick.

As an experiment, Rick and Brenda moved the family to New York City, living in Brooklyn for a year. “It was a really formative experience for us,” says Rick. “In a city like New York, art and artists are celebrated, and you realize that’s the way it should be.”

After living in the city for a year, the Beerhorsts decided to move back to their hometown of West Michigan. “We belong here and have a deep taproot,” says Rick. “We learned a lot in New York, but knew long-term that it wasn’t going to be our home.”

Return to West Michigan
The family purchased a home on Fuller, sight unseen, online. One of the big selling points was the carriage house in the backyard, which the family uses as a studio, works in progress lining the walls. The rest of their home is bursting at the seams with all types of art, from jewelry to drawings to rugs to paintings to dolls. The family holds three shows at their home each year, with the next to be held the first weekend in September.
 
“When we came back to Grand Rapids, we had more of an incentive,” says Rick. “We weren’t going to make it in New York, but wondered what we could do to infuse art with the culture here.”

As a family solely supporting themselves as artists, Rick admits that it isn’t always an easy lifestyle to sustain. By selling pieces ranging from $1 pins to 8” x 10” paintings that sell for upwards of $7,000, their income is irregular and unpredictable. The Beerhorsts traded their car for their large community dining room table, but have found a new freedom in reducing their dependence on material possessions. 

With no medical or dental insurance, they trade art for services such as midwifery when the children came and dental work. The family has never had a TV in the house, but relies instead on the stimulation that books and great movies provide, as well as the art of conversation.  "We have almost all of our meals together and there is lots of conversation," Rick says. "We often have people over and the children are often in earshot of our conversations if not actively participating.”  

The family garden yields mostly edibles, and there is a strong interaction between the Beerhorsts, neighbors and friends.   "We help our friends and they help us.," Rick says. "We give away 10 percent of whatever comes in. People give us things, like someone dropped off about five pounds of cherries on our porch yesterday and we didn’t recognize the person, nor did they stop to say hello. Once someone tossed a frozen pot roast onto our porch. People drop off clothes and art material. We pick things up off the curb and fix them if needed, like furniture and kitchen tools.”

“We’ve gotten good at living frugally,” he says.

“You have to believe that you've been called to be an artist because when the going gets tough -- and it will -- you can still feel solid because you know you are doing what you are supposed to be doing," says Brenda, 48.  "It's not easy but it's worth it.”

Growth of the Artist Class
Rick recognizes the growing artistic class in West Michigan, and would like to see art become more entwined as an integral part of everyday life – beginning with something as simple as art hanging in local stores to fostering a greater acceptance of artists in the community. “Grand Rapids is a contender, and all it takes is the synergy of investing, risking and just doing cool things,” he says. “That’s when the lightening happens.”

The family is participating in ArtPrize and hopes the competition serves to call attention to and elevate the profile of Grand Rapids as an artistic community. For their entry, the Beerhorsts are transforming an Amish buggy into a modern-day gypsy wagon filled with and surrounded by various types of art. The wagon will include pieces produced by the Beerhorst family and live art created by other local performance artists. “It’s a mobile extension of what we’ve been doing for the past year, but taken to the next level,” says Rick. “ArtPrize is a way to stir the drink, and we’re excited about it.”

If it lives up to expectations, Rick sees ArtPrize as an example of the way the creative world is headed in a more entrepreneurial direction. “There’s an electricity that happens when you draw people together,” he says. “In the current climate, it feels like a revolution that we’re living through, and the potential of people is pretty exciting.”

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Kelly Quintanilla is a freelance writer born, raised and living in West Michigan. She is also the marketing director at Ada-based CUSO Development Company.

Photographs by Brian Kelly - All Rights Reserved

Brian Kelly is Rapid Growth's managing photographer. He makes images...both still and moving. You can follow his adventures here on his blog.