Columbia Missourian
(Front page photo and text below the photo. The photo is captioned Artist and M.U. graduate Ken Segan uses his art as a learning tool to teach students about the Holocaust. Segan shows a photograph he will use in a drawing to a lithography class at M.U. on Wednesday. / Photo by KRIS REITZ / Missourian)
Lest we forget: Ken Segan uses art to commemorate Holocaust victims
by Kathryn Larson, Missourian staff writer
Adrian Pechet was a Romanian Jew. In 1945 he was released from a Nazi concentration camp and then died of typhus at the age of 20. We know Pechet's name, but there were hundreds of thousands of anonymous Holocaust victims. Ken Segan, an artist and M.U. graduate, uses art to represent the nameless victims.
"I'm not just doing art for art's sake. I'm using the art as a learning tool," Segan said. Segan, works in Seattle, came to M.U. last year in conjunction with Holocaust Remembrance Month. This year, he has given presentations to students in Columbia. M.U. art students saw some of Segan's unfinished work Wednesday when he discussed his inspiration and technique. Segan draws from photographs, isolating one or a few figures. On a white background, he draws the figures in black ink. He gives each of his subjects wings, both for the religious significance and to symbolize their disappearance.
Many of the photographs Segan uses were taken by Nazi soldiers in Warsaw, Poland. After he draws the person, he goes to a zoology museum to find examples of birds wings. Segan's art was influenced by his trips to Communist Poland in the mid -1980's.
"I saw things that I don't like to talk or think about. When I started this series in 1991 it gave me a way to channel all that I'd been seeing," he said. The series will eventually include 50 drawings. About 30 are finished.
"I would have finished it sooner, but the drawings are painful for me."
A display of Segan's work in the Fine Arts Building shows examples of Nazi propaganda. Alongside the World War II propaganda is a page printed from the internet.
"This is a White Racist Web page. You are about to enter the White Aryan Resistance....HATE ROOM," the page reads.
It is partly because of the presence of these ideas that Segan continues his campaign.
"I gear most of my presentations towards younger audiences - elementary schools, junior highs, even colleges," Segan said. He thinks these audiences are more receptive, and more likely to change. Rebecca Huston, an M.U. student, thought the presentation was effective. "It's important to remember these things so they don't happen again," she said.
When Segan speaks about the Holocaust, he is quiet and matter-of-fact. The depth of his emotions comes through only in his words.
"Think of all the lost talent in 6 million people," he said."People who might have done great things."
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At lower right: A photo of UTW 33: Everyone's zayde - Portrait of Dodye Feig
(Feig was the late Elie Wiesel's maternal granddad). The photo reproduction caption: Artist Ken Segan draws his subjects in black ink, giving each of them wings.