FAITH IN FORM: Friends, family say Verna Bartnick found beauty everywhere

Feb. 1—TRAVERSE CITY — Mary Kelly recalled how her mother, Verna Bartnick, saw the beauty in nearly everything and everyone.

It's what made her mother such a good artist — and such an optimist, Kelly said. A sunset could stop Bartnick in her tracks, as would more subtle details Kelly often overlooked.

"She found the good and beauty in all life, and related it all back to, it's all part of God's creation," Kelly said.

Bartnick, a sculptor who created several works around Traverse City and who, with her late husband, Arthur, started Old Mission Tavern and the Bella Galleria next door, died Jan. 23 at age 92.

Along with her love of art and devout Catholic faith, friends and family recalled how her excellent cooking delighted them — and how Arthur and Verna's open-house policy extended to everyone.

That included Maxine Thompson, who stayed with the Bartnicks in the 1967-68 school year and was St. Francis High School's first Black student. Thompson, who died in March 2023, wrote of her experiences after Bartnick urged her to keep a diary that would serve as the source material for her book, "Lineage: A Memoir."

Kelly was a year behind Thompson in school and recalled how her mother and the high school girl from Detroit talked about racism in the region. Reading Thompson's book showed Kelly what a deep rapport the two had as Bartnick urged her not to assume everyone in and around Traverse City was prejudiced. And Thompson challenged Bartnick.

"They really had a great dialogue and a wonderful relationship," she said.

Bartnick was in her late 30s and raising seven children when she started art classes at Northwestern Michigan College, according to her obituary.

Joe Bartnick, one of those seven, figures he was about 9 when his mother started working with sand sculptures in a big basement sandbox.

Kelly also remembered her mother digging out the shape of her statues in the Lake Leelanau beach during a cottage stay.

Those earliest works, her plaster statues of the pregnant Virgin Mary, are among Kelly's favorites. So, too, are Bartnick's "Stations of the Cross" for St. Francis Church, for which she also created a statue of its namesake saint.

"Every time she does anything, I go, 'Wow, how can you get a face to look like that? That really shows the emotion of sorrow,'" Kelly said.

Two other prominent bronze works include Bartnick's statue of Perry Hannah at the city founder's namesake park and "Time to Let Go" in the Open Space — Joe's personal favorite, since it features an Old Mission Tavern employee as the dad and his nephew as the bike-riding child, he said.

Peg Jonkhoff helped raise the money to gift the statue with the city through sales of her and Fred Hoisington's book, "Perry Hannah's Gifts, Then and Now." She said the work is a testament to Bartnick's eye for detail and the community seems to have adopted it, judging by the accessories people place on Hannah.

"Verna, she was so caring and so creative, and she wanted it right," Jonkhoff said. "She wanted it just perfect and she was ... just so gifted, and she just really cared that she wanted to represent Mr. Hannah."

Joe helped a bit with what was his mother's last big sculpture, pouring bronze into molds for individual pieces that fellow sculptor T.J. Caroll welded together. She enjoyed seeing the hats and other additions people made, as he recalled.

Bartnick did more for the city's artistic community than open her gallery and contribute her work.

Bill Hyslop, who helped manage the gallery in the mid-2010s where his own works showed, remembered how she held a banquet each year for the gallery's artists at Old Mission Tavern. These were remarkable gatherings for Hyslop, complete with delicious food and wine. They also were a chance for Bartnick to ask each artist what they'd been working on.

Hyslop also recalled how, when he first asked Bartnick about one of his paintings, she offered some constructive criticism. "I checked back a few days later and she said, 'You know, your drawing is really good, the perspective is good, but you're not painting with a full palette,'" Hyslop said.

Others told the painter she had insulted him, but he saw no bad intent in her comment. In fact, Hyslop said, what she had told him was true, and he improved his color selections as a result.

Hyslop said he respected and enjoyed working with her. Both would spend hours talking about not just art, but philosophy and ethics, among other subjects. "She was spiritually intense, talented and devoted to art and artistic expression," he said.

Joe also remembered how his mother hosted fundraisers for the Dennos Museum Center once a year. He took over Old Mission Tavern operations in 1988 after seven years in the U.S. Coast Guard, and said the tavern's Sunday chicken dinners were her idea.

His favorite among Bartnick's recipes that she taught him how to make are her chili and the pierogies, with Kelly saying they're one of her favorites as well. Both separately said they love the taste and so do the tavern's diners. The recipe has been handed down to her grandchildren after she learned it from her Polish in-laws.

Kelly said she'll make her mom's stuffed grape leaves in honor of her. It's something her mother learned out of an interest in Jewish culture and, for Kelly, it's a delicious — if labor-intensive — bit of Mediterranean fare.

Beyond the recipes and memories, Kelly said, she'll hold onto her mother's optimism and ability to see God in so many things.

"I'll remember that and try to take that with me," she said, "just to be more optimistic and look for the beauty in everything."