Marney Rich Keenan

Artist Beeby finds inspiration in regional history

Eastport, Mich.

I am sitting inside artist Betty Beeby's historic farmhouse, built on several dozen idyllic acres in Eastport, a small town between two of the most beautiful bodies of fresh water on Earth: Lake Michigan and Torch Lake.

Beeby's art is everywhere. Illustrations, drawings and paintings line every visible space from floor to ceiling. There are several canvases on the front porch, sketches on the kitchen cupboards, framed art hanging on pantry doors. Upstairs, her studio is filled with works in progress: One is Beeby's as-yet unpublished illustrated catalog of smiles. The placemats at the small dining table where we sit depict hand-painted letters of the alphabet shaped in willowy goldenrod. Even the seat cushions are made of Beeby's hand-painted fabric.

At age 86, Beeby is still prolific; her wonder and inspiration know no bounds. As she visits with a former student of hers, Robin Rich, who also happens to be my sister-in-law, I get to be a fly on the wall and listen to a language that is all their own.

"You always said you wished the water would stand still," Rich says, looking at a Beeby watercolor of skaters on Torch Lake.

"Well, yes, I've always been fascinated by motion," Beeby answers. "Of course, Galileo said, 'To be ignorant of motion is to be ignorant of nature.' I find corn pretty elegant too. You see pictures of cornfields that are so dull. They don't get IT! There's movement. Corn stalks are elegant like dancers."

"Yes they are," says Rich, evidently seeing the dance in her mind's eye.

Back in 1975, Rich was a mural assistant helping Beeby paint the 11-by-50-foot mural of the Mackinac Bridge and the Straits of Mackinac (now on display at the orientation center at Fort Michilimackinac). Then a 19-year-old art student, she lived with Beeby in a small apartment in Mackinaw City, within walking distance of the bridge. She says it was one of the most cherished summers of her life.

This visit to Beeby's -- "We'll only stay 15 minutes," she promised Beeby, but we stayed for two hours -- was a couple of mornings after Beeby had been honored at the aptly titled "We Love Betty Beeby" Night, where more than 175 admirers congratulated her for her recent State History Award for Distinguished Volunteer Service from the Historical Society of Michigan.

But most everyone said that was just an excuse to get in front of the microphone and give back to the woman who had so enriched their lives, made them better people and certainly better stewards of their beloved state.

Born and raised in Detroit, Beeby spent her childhood summers here at the family cottages. After raising four children in Kalamazoo, she and her husband, Jim Beeby, relocated to her ancestral home.

Beeby received the award for more than 60 years of contributions to Michigan as an artist, historian and preservationist. One of her most notable projects began in 1972 with the discovery of several steamer trunks in the loft of the century-old barn of her ancestors. The trunks contained a vast collection of memorabilia, including several thousand letters and 24 diaries dating from 1860 to 1940. Because the fragile letters were laden with mold and worms, Beeby dried them on her lawn and then sorted the letters by postmark into eight different colored laundry baskets: one for each decade.

The collection of letters is now preserved in the Archives and Regional History Collections at Western Michigan University. They also are the subject of Beeby's book "Breath Escaping Envelopes" (2000, Pearl Press), in which she chronicles the hardships faced by women living on Grand Traverse Bay from 1870-1910.

From a small portion of the letters, a few hundred, Beeby weaved together a terribly poignant story: correspondence between a 27-year-old man, who discovers via a deathbed confession that he had been adopted, and his birth mother. After surrendering her baby as a teenager, his mother had been told her baby died.

Beeby threw herself into researching these long lost souls, ultimately traveling to places mentioned in the letters with sketchbook and pen in hand to create a series of nine lithographs. "The Peterboro Letters" (many were postmarked Peterboro, Ontario) has been on exhibit at several galleries throughout the state and served as the centerpiece of a classical music score titled "The Peterboro Suite" that has been performed throughout the world.

That doesn't even scratch the surface of Beeby's contributions: the children's books she's written, illustrated and donated to Michigan elementary schools; the scholarships she founded in her name; the restoration of a rural Michigan homestead; and the discovery and preservation of more than 1,000 glass negatives produced by a 19th-century photographer.

And Beeby doesn't stop. She's still teaching, still managing to weave in a lesson or two in casual conversation over coffee.

"You know I really believe that hate is a lack of imagination," the forever mentor says to her forever protege. "Wallace Stevens said, 'Imagination is the necessary angel of the Earth.' It solves problems. It really does."

Rich didn't get her chance at the microphone that night, but if she had, here's part of what she would have said: "I learned from Betty as much about life as about art. I learned how to persevere even when the challenge is on a large scale. That summer, under Betty's gentle wing, I learned not only how to look, I learned how to see."

mkeenan@detnews.com (313) 222-2515