Visual Arts Faculty Share Their Talents
In the artist statement that accompanies her work in the new faculty art show in Bell Gallery, Lily Gillett captures both her personal approach to the creative process and her teaching philosophy at Rivers.
“I love printmaking because of the unexpected surprises that spontaneously occur and the ability to go back in and rework an image,” she writes. “It directly relates to the philosophy I encourage in the Middle School art room—to take risks and work freely.”
A gallery reception on Thursday, October 12, kicked off the month-long exhibit that features works in a wide variety of media. It is exciting—and inspiring—to see what the Visual Arts faculty find the time to create when they’re not in the classroom, submitting student work for competitions, or helping to assemble art portfolios for the seniors. For some, the summer months gave them the opportunity to pursue their own art, while others work throughout the year on various projects. For students and adults in the community, their productivity is a testament to their commitment to being life-long learners.
The artist statements accompanying the exhibit (and excerpted here) give a glimpse into the goals and challenges that went into the creative process.
Visual Art Department chair David Saul traded in his sophisticated single lens reflex camera for a plastic Holga camera, a “toy” camera with a soft-focus quality that invites a more direct interaction with the world. “I enjoy using the Holga camera to create narrative passages of related images instead of making single photographs. When I am thinking and seeing in a sequential manner, I scan a landscape, shoreline, or situation and imagine how to make a series of related images. While I have a sense of where to begin, I have to trust my intuition and the process. I invite the viewer to…discover how the frames relate and what experience or narrative is implied.”
Jeremy Harrison’s striking landscapes, familiar to many in the Rivers community, are presented in several different media in this exhibit: “Most of these images celebrate the relationship between earth and sky, and the transitory nature of clouds might remind us of the less obvious transitory nature of the earth itself… I realize that each one of us has our own unique notion of what is beautiful, and even this viewpoint may change over time…I hope that my work reminds you to see the beauty of our planet.”
Lily Gillett, whose work included photographs, monotypes, and gouaches, enjoys the unexpected outcomes of the creative process: “I love the versatility of gouache in the way you can layer and experiment with color. The unexpected ways it reacts helps me keep an open mind as to where the image will go. Sometimes I let the paint decide what the next step will be—an unexpected bleed or mark can sometimes turn into the most interesting part of the painting.”
Lisa Townley’s ceramics look like a lush bed of ferns, and she invites the viewer to think about the effect of her massed collection as an expression of fractal geometry: “This group of ceramic pieces contains individual pots with a similar image, but the pots are not identical. Each one is unique, yet the vessels differ in important ways…Are these pieces unique or do they create a homogeneous group? How does the symbol of a fern leaf connect or disconnect the set? What is the relationship between individuality and community?”
Chris Love’s graphic compositions are meant to draw the viewer into a dialog: “The purpose of my work now is to engage the viewer through direct gaze. You enter my work through the eye that’s looking back at you; hopefully reflecting common experience, similarities or, even better, differences. The space made on the wall for you in my work allows you to be your own catalyst while viewing the work. I am a prompt to start thinking, find meaning and act in order to be heard - or seen.”
Rindy Garner’s collection of wooden boxes—entitled “Kindred”—provided her with a meditative experience. “I love working with wood because every board has once been part of a living tree with a history and continues its life transformed into a work of art. Each unique line of grain in the wood marks time and wisdom gained—a wrinkle in one’s skin… I reflected on the nature of time as I shaped these new forms into creation.”
For Tim Clark, a summer road trip provided inspiration for some of his exhibited work: “We drove over 6,000 miles, traveled through eighteen states and the District of Columbia, and went as far west as Colorado…It was quite a different experience to travel from one [state] to the next and take in the subtle (and not so subtle) shifts in the landscape. These works do not directly draw inspiration from any one place; it was the overall experience that led to the making of these forms.”
For each artist, getting there—sometimes literally, sometimes in the creative process—was half the pleasure and challenge. With this exhibit, the Visual Arts Department invites you to join them and see the world through their eyes, or as David Saul says in his statement, “Hope you enjoy the journey!”
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