By Matt Hall
Bryan Hahn is the Department of Art secretary and the Runnel’s Gallery manager. He has some unique items displayed in his office.
First, Hahn has a guitar hanging on the wall to the left of his desk.
“I actually found that at Hobby Lobby,” he said. “It was in clearance for $5, and I bought it one year for Green and Silver Day for the Department of Music’s table. I just thought it was interesting; it would make a decorative piece. Since I purchased it, I thought it should go on the wall afterward.”
Hahn chuckled as he added, “Either that or it would go to waste.”
Hahn also has a wooden art piece somewhat hidden behind an old computer monitor.
“That is a plywood project that [Art Professor] Greg Senn teaches in his classes, and that’s actually a piece from one of his students who sold it to me,” Hahn said. “I just thought it was interesting.”
A very nice-looking marching band hat sits next to a window by the hanging guitar. Hahn never has been affiliated with a marching band, but there is a significance to the hat.
Hahn was on the committee that planned and coordinated the university’s 75th anniversary picnic. In DaBaca Hall, which no longer exists, one of the dorm rooms had a bunch of old band uniforms.
Hahn and the other committee members “thought it would be fun if, for people who were working the picnic, to wear pieces of them. Of course, they were really old uniforms, at a time when people were a great deal smaller than they are today. So about the only things we could actually wear were the hats.”
“I was fortunate,” Hahn said. “I got to keep one of the old hats.”
A couple of clay figures are situated above Hahn’s window.
“Gumby and Pokey,” Hahn said, snickering at the memory of the old cartoon. “I remember watching that a long time ago when it first came out, and I was very taken by clay animation. Today, it’s like nothing compared to what they are doing, but at that time it was pretty cool.”
Hahn bought the iconic figures years ago, and “they have followed me from every job I’ve ever been to.”
“They’ve just always been around,” Hahn said, “so I’m probably never getting rid of them.”