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Daniel Roache: "Practical Academe"
The Collection calls for a work of art to be dedicated each year to a Ferris president, past and future. The Roache work was dedicated to former president William A. Sederburg. Sederburg was a long time supporter of the arts during his legislative career in Lansing. He chaired the General Government Committee that financed the arts in Michigan. He received a number of awards from the Michigan Arts Council for being an advocate of the arts. Since assuming the helm at Ferris, he was struck by a lack of the artistic element on campus. He decided to implement a long range goal to create a more artistically interesting campus.
 Roache, a painter, printmaker and metal sculptor formerly of the Detroit Institute of Arts, sculpted an abstract representation of the seven academic colleges at Ferris from painted and cut aluminum. The sculpture is three-dimensional, approximately 30-by-40 inches around the perimeter and four inches deep, and will be bolted into a wall in the Williams Auditorium lobby. According to Roache, the piece is very "people proof." Roache cuts shapes to represent people and things from the metal that he said "had former lives as stop signs and storm doors." He added in jest that he cuts around the bullet holes. "Some people do sculptures from found objects," said Roache. "My philosophy is that found objects are meant to be lost. "I prefer to analyze, and sometimes agonize, over the placement of every element of design," he said. "The fact that it is much easier to change one’s mind with an eraser than with a band saw, drill press and rivets makes me think over my composition and not depend on the ‘happy accidents’ that expressionist painters can count on." His sculpture came out of his painting, Roache said. He noted that paintings are not meant to be touched, and that paintings are only two dimensional. By spreading out his work in terms of depth and texture he is able to create work that can be experienced by its viewers through touch. The artist begins with a drawing in pencil. He then blows his drawing up to a cartoon. He makes patterns and cuts the metal shapes with a band saw. Taking the raw metal, he screws the pieces together to hang and check for structural problems. Assured that the piece will hang as planned, he disassembles the sculpture. He then plans the color, and paints each piece in lightfast enamels and automobile paints. After drying, he permanently reattaches the pieces to complete the work. Roache is as concerned with the shape of voids between pieces as he is with the painted surfaces. He strives to make all parts of the design hold the viewers’ interest -- adding a bit of mystery, and making it complicated enough that it cannot be taken in with one brief glance. "I feel that any work of art which is simple enough to reveal itself with a glance may be theoretically ‘valid’ as art, but to my mind merely decorative," he said. "In a short time art that is so minimal becomes as ignored and invisible as the furniture we live with. I strive to create an image that can be visited again and again, always revealing something new."
In addition to his work at DIA, Roache served as an instructor of painting at North Central Michigan College in Petoskey and in stained glass construction for the Henry Ford Museum education department in Dearborn. From 1987-90 he was co-owner of the Bridge Street Gallery in Charlevoix. His work is held in the collections of Michigan National Bank Corporation; First of America Bank; Edsel Ford; Grand Rapids Community College; Loyola University in Chicago; Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan; Governor John Engler; Michigan Commission on Art in Public Places of Saginaw; Hutzel Hospital in Detroit; American Standox Inc. and Munson Medical Center in Traverse City. --by Deborah Ranesbottom, October, 1996
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| In The Words Of The Artist |
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As Ferris begins its 20-year Renaissance movement, the first piece in the Presidential Art Collection, a creation by 
Roache studied drawing and painting in the studio of Michigan artist Ruth Loring-Janes from 1965-72. He was employed as a toolmaker and skilled machinist from 1974-75 while he studied art and art history in Detroit area colleges. He also studied at the Detroit Institute of Arts, where he was employed as special exhibition staff and as an assistant in the DIA Research Library from 1975-1980. He studied painting from 1980-86 with Michigan artist Karl Staber.