Faculty Profile: Professor James Bockelman

Professor James Bockelman ’89 is an instructor of art and director of the Marxhausen Gallery of Art at Concordia University, Nebraska. He started out in college at Concordia University, Nebraska, because he wanted to be an art teacher. “At the time, I decided that teaching was more important than art was,” he said. But that quickly changed after he came to Concordia. Bockelman became inspired to make art a more central part of his life, in part because of some of his professors. “I took a [Professor Richard] Wiegmann drawing class and it changed me. The man lived and breathed art--the way he taught, the way he gave chapel messages. When it came to the visual world, he was both sophisticated and refined. And it showed.”  

After graduation, Bockelman had sights set on graduate school but was called to serve as a junior high school teacher at Redeemer Lutheran in California. Halfway through his third year, he got a call that one of the professors at Concordia’s Art Department was going on sabbatical, and they needed a replacement for one semester. What attracted Bockelman was that the position may open to full time. Ideally in this position, he would be able to get his master’s degree and work as an art professor at the same time. The expectation was that he would teach at Concordia for 5-7 years. But Bockelman mused that “I got here, and my roots just started growing.”  

When you’ve been in a program for that long, you begin to learn some things about how it functions. “When I started, I was working with the same professors who had taught me, who made me want to make art a lifelong commitment,” Bockelman said. “I spent basically the first ten years absorbing what they taught me and applying that in the classroom.” Now Bockelman has been teaching at Concordia for the past 30 years.   

His time in the program has caused Bockelman to gain a sense of ownership of his teaching, his studio practice, and the space the art department occupies. “It’s honestly a pretty big deal for a small private school to have the space that we do. Every room in Brommer is used for a specific purpose. If you look at art departments across the nation, especially at Christian institutions, often they’re stuck in the basement or share a fine art building with other departments. Concordia is unique, because of the footprint we have. We’re in the top 10% of Christian schools that have our own facilities. What is so impressive to me, is that these professors worked from nothing, a house for the art department, and built this program to be a significant contribution to the university and the world.” 

Bockelman needs energy because he feels that art is an essential part of his being. “When I’m in the studio, I’m learning how I think, and I’m learning who I am. It's how I come to terms with big ideas of the world. My existence, what I value and do not value. There is something validating when you put images out into the world. I want to improve the world visually, and when I’m in my studio and making artifacts, it gets better.”  

Bockelman is currently visually improving the world through art shows in Berlin, Germany, and Lincoln, Nebraska, and through his teaching. In his free time, unsurprisingly, he enjoys making art. 

Interested in being a part of the art program at Concordia? Learn more here.