Dear Friends,
As I write, we have a little more than a month left in the semester and there’s evidence everywhere of art students in full tilt boogie. Sculptures occupy as much floor and ceiling space as possible throughout Williams Hall. Paintings, photographs, prints, and drawings fill the hallway walls. Frank Owen’s Advanced Painting class has taken over Colburn Gallery.
This fall we welcomed two new tenure-track faculty to the Art History Program. Pepper Stetler teaches courses in European and American art of the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, and the history of photography. Pepper’s Ph.D. is from the University of Delaware, and her dissertation is on photographic books of the Weimar Republic. Anthony Grudin is our new contemporary art specialist. He received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, and his dissertation is entitled “Television Dreams: Andy Warhol and the History of Postwar Advertising”.
This is also the first semester of The Integrated Fine Arts Program, with first-year students working in drawing, dance, and avant-garde music. The students have taken classes and workshops with professional artists in coordination with the Flynn Theater, and have been involved in collaborative efforts in music, lighting, movement/dance and visual arts. Lynda McIntyre is teaching in the program, and she says it’s a “fabulous” class. “Brave, motivated…students pushing the boundaries of ideas and art forms.”
In September, our Visiting Artist/Art Historian series brought Corin Hewitt to campus in September to discuss his recent installation at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Corin is the son of the late Frank Hewitt, the painter and former chair of the Art Department. The next week Joe Lewis spoke and had an exhibition, “Welcome to Jena: Prints from the Front” in the Colburn Gallery. About his prints, Lewis wrote that they are “A collection of markings that reconstruct narratives about how we build relationships between ourselves, regardless of their implications. In this case, the main antagonists are: choice, race, and representation, or other social-phobia or remembrances that haunt our daily lives.”
In October, the Cuban artist Aluan Arguelles lectured in conjunction with his Colburn Gallery exhibition of paintings, “Life Turn on a Dime”. The show and talk was co-sponsored by the Vermont Institute on the Caribbean. The 10th Annual Roland Batten Memorial Lecturer on Architecture and Design was presented on October 28th by Will Fleissig. Fleissig’s lecture was entitled, “Sanity Scenario: Emerging Design Strategies Toward a Sustainable Burlington”. He is currently developing a new 130 acre sustainable campus called West Village at UC Davis in California. He is the former Planning Director in Boulder Colorado.
And on November 18th we will host T. Barton Thurber, the Curator of European Art at the Hood Museum, Dartmouth College, who will give a lecture, “Picturing Pompeii from the Age of Enlightenment to the Victorian Era”.
In September the Colburn Gallery showed the work of the 2008/2009 Hewitt/Crawford Award Winners. The exhibit included the photographs of Patrick Galuzzo, the prints of Juliana Marton, and the paintings of Ashley Lipton and Violetta Hinojosa.
Four of our studio lecturers exhibited their work in the Colburn during the week of November 2. Meg McDevitt and Beth Haggart showed new drawings, while Laurie Peters exhibited her fine metals, and Hoyt Barringer included his clay vessels.
Following Frank Owen’s Advanced Painting class exhibition, the Fall Semester’s Colburn schedule includes an exhibition of the photographs of Tarrah Krajnak and Walker Blackwell, and work from Kathleen Schneider’s Advanced Sculpture class and Tom Brennan’s Advanced Photography class.
Art Education:
Chris Campbell has graciously (and expertly) stepped in as Interim Director of Art Education for the 2009-2010 academic year. We are currently conducting a search for a tenure-track director, the position to begin in August 2010.
Art History:
Kelley Helmstutler- Di Dio received a 2009/2010 Lattie F. Coor Endowment to support her book project, “Sculpture and Status in Early Modern Spain”. Anthony Grudin also received a Lattie F. Coor Endowment. Anthony had an essay entitled "'A Sign of Good Taste': Andy Warhol and the rise of brand image advertising" accepted for publication in the Oxford Art Journal. He has also organized a conference, "Do I look fearless?": Warhol, Photography, Identity, to be held on February 28 at the Fleming Museum in conjunction with their exhibition of Warhol's photography. Two of the panelists from that conference, Binta Ayofemi and Jason Hanasik, will be showing their work in the Colburn Gallery during the first week of March. John Seyller delivered a lecture entitled “Marwar and Mughal-Style Painting” at the symposium organized by the Seattle Asian Art Museum in conjunction with the exhibition “Garden & Cosmos”. The exhibition featured Indian paintings from the royal collection in Jodhpur. John also completed an article entitled “Two Mughal Mirror Cases” which will be published in early 2010 in the Journal of the David Collection. It includes an important discovery about a mirror case acquired recently by the Freer Gallery of Art. John also published the article, “The Colophon Portrait of the Royal Asiatic Society Gulistan of Sa’di.” in Artibus Asiae 68, no. 2 (2008): 333-342.
Studio Art:
Mildred Beltré and Jane Kent presented a talk on artists’ books at the Special Collections Reading Room in the Bailey Howe Library. Cami Davis and Nancy Dwyer recently exhibited at Burlington City Arts, Firehouse Gallery “HUMAN=LANDSCAPE, Aesthetics of a Carbon Restrained Future”. Davis is currently working on six new paintings that she began during her May Vermont Artist Week residency at the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont. Kathy Marmor was awarded the 2009/2010 Dean’s Award. She presented a paper, “Bird Watching: Satellites and Telescopes and the Metaphor of Transparency” to the International Society of Electronic Artists in Belfast, Ireland. She also received a creation grant from Vermont Arts Council for her residency with the Fairbanks Museum in 2010. And she showed “Personal FANs” in a group show called “Unintended Uses” at Nexus Gallery in Philadelphia. Meg McDevitt is currently exhibiting cast bronzes in a show at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY. The show, "Five Sculptors in Vermont", runs through Dec. 4th. Bill McDowell received a 2009/2010 Lattie F. Coor Endowment to support the printing of his exhibition, “Ashes in the Night Sky”. Lynda McIntyre has some of her paintings on the cover and inside of an upcoming music CD, “Safe Haven” by Passarelle. Frank Owen has been invited to honorary membership in the Golden Key International Honour Society. The image of his painting, "Between Seasons III," 2002, will be the cover of Middlebury College's next edition of its literary journal, "The New England Review."
William McDowell, Chair