Since the Fall 2005 semester, four art professors have been putting their work on display at the Francis Colburn Art Gallery on the second floor of Williams Hall. The works of art range from abstract sculptures to black and white photographs to large acrylic paintings and are generally on display for two weeks.
Monday, January 30th marked the opening of the most recent display, honoring Sean Dye, Judith Stone, Adriana Katzew and Lynda Reeves McIntyre-all professors in the Art Department.
Sean Dye has on display four paintings in a future series of 50 that speak of “Vermont’s past and present.” Growing up around farms for most of his life, Sean has an attachment to agriculture.
This becomes evident when looking at his pastoral paintings in vivid yellows, reds and greens. Sean involves himself and his canvass in a tedious process of photographing the subject of his painting, cropping, sketching, etching with charcoal and applying many layers. The reward, however, is in the mixing of colors.
The titles are works of art, themselves; The “John Deere 5200 Forage Harvester: 6.2 Miles from Wal-Mart” and the “New Holland ‘Crop Chopper’: 3.7 miles from Best Buy” speak of Sean’s views on the growth of Chittenden County by which he is “constantly amazed and worried.”
Judith Stone encourages viewers to explore her multi-dimensional work from all angles. Of her mixed media pieces on display entitled “Willful Endangerment I” and “Willful Endangerment II (Her Stone Dress),” Judith says that “the focus of [her] work since the late 1980’s has been the machinery of the earth’s-and materials’-moving process: tractors, booms, cranes, shovels, backhoes.”
Adriana Katzew, aside from her most recent project, works strictly in black and white film, which she develops (not uploads) herself. This new series was her first “attempt” with a digital camera.
While working with partner Alexander Goldowsky, they took a different approach to the clich?©d subject of flowers. Within each photo, one sees many different things, but rarely a flower. “I see landscapes, splotches of color and even Jackson Pollock in them,” claims Adriana.
Lynda Reeves McIntyre is the chair of the Art Department and has several works from several series on display currently, as she works mostly in series. In one particular series Lynda paints daily the “fingers of birches as they wave in the mountain’s winter skies.” These paintings end up as a curious combination of pristine blues with crawling white birch trees.
Despite the tremendous differences between these four artists, and including their similarities, their works seem to center around a similar theme: nature vs. destruction. Whether the destruction is looming in the distance or has temporarily ceased, it is in the solace of nature that things appear their best.
