Spring 2014
ART & DESIGN SENIOR EXHIBITION
The 2014 Art and Design Senior Exhibition runs from April 28th through May 9th.
A reception for the artists is scheduled for Monday, April 28 from 4:30 – 6:30 pm.
Art, Art Therapy and Graphic Design students present their final portfolios and thesis projects.
Contributing artists include Jessica Benitez, Kristen Bogardus, Caitlin Bottari, Cindy Bulding, Caroline DeSpirito, Ben Ermann, Kristine Falkowski, Michael Galonski, Brianna Hayden, Deana Ivory, Gerald Krueder, Michael Madden, Danielle Marino, Cassandra Michelotti, Ashley Moretto, Jennifer Passani, Laura Queliz, Greg Simonelli and Elizabeth Whalen.
Earthday @ AMAG
Tuesday April 22nd from 10:00- 4:00
Students, faculty and staff are welcome to help build a recycled plastic sculpture.
See how much plastic you actually use and take home a reusable bottle. Learn about the Plastiki project and see creative reuse in action!
PERSON, PLACE OR THING
Person, Place or Thing runs from March 31st through April 20th.
A reception for the artists is scheduled for Wednesday, April 9, from 4:30 – 6:30 pm.
Members of the St. Thomas Aquinas community submitted photos of people, places or things to create this group photo installation.
Contributing artists include Joy Alacar, Kathryn Baumgartner, Jessica Benitez, Alexa Caggiano, Quinton Chambers, Joseph Chegwidden, Angelica Covino, Shelby Coyle, Kelly Dellaera, Caroline DeSpirito, Djoulie Dormeus, Joanne Favata, Mike Galonski, Alyssa Hamilton, Elizabeth Harper, Deana Ivory, Maddison Lord, Michael Madden, Jessica Parker, Jennifer Passanisi, Thomas Petrarca, William Prior, Krystal Rivera, Michael Shaw, Chris Silva, Rebekka Slate, Arianna Sotos and Barbara Yontz.
Curated by Matthew Finn and Nina Bellisio
LANNIE HART
Lannie Hart: Steel Lace runs from February 24 through March 23.
A reception for the artist is scheduled for Wednesday, March 5, from 4:30 – 6:30 pm. A gallery talk will be given at 5:30 that evening
Lannie Hart has been a working artist for over 35 years. She began her career in the cosmetic industry as an art director and package designer. This experience, as well as her work with jewelry design, porcelain and soft sculpture, informs her sensibilities as an artist. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group shows in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
ALLAN GORMAN
Allan Gorman: Revved Up and Ready to Rumble runs from January 21 through February 16.
A reception for the artist is scheduled for Wednesday, February 5, from 4:30 – 6:30 pm. A gallery talk will be given at 5:30 that evening
In this body of work, Allan Gorman seeks to dissect the machine. His abstracted compositions romanticize the mechanical, chrome and steel captured within the edges of the canvas. While silently separated from their means of use (the car, the motorcycle) each composition purrs with potential energy. His work owes a debt to photo-realist painters such as Charles Sheeler, whose precise examination of factories made him one of the fathers of modernism. Gorman updates this style using the products of later 20th century industry.
With a background in advertising and graphic design, Gorman focuses on the pure form of the machine. Color, shape and reflection create tension between positive and negative spaces, heightened by the cropped nature of the compositions. His work is about the essence found within objects, rather than the objects themselves.
Since 1987 Gorman has run his own ad and design studio, Brandspa, and has won numerous advertising awards including the Clio and the Andy. His is a self-taught painter who has exhibited and lectured nationally.
Fall 2013
ART FACULTY SHOW
The 2013 Art Faculty Show runs from November 4 through December 8.
A reception is scheduled for Thursday, November 21, from 4:30 – 6:30 pm.
Featuring the work of Nina Bellisio, Karen Edelmann, Matthew Finn, Daly Flanagan, Carol Lagstein, Jerry McGuire, Carl Rattner, Rene Smith and Barbara Yontz.
The faculty show has been a tradition in colleges with art programs for decades. In a visual discipline it is an equivalent to publication and is a demonstration of professional practice. The show is also an opportunity for students and the greater community to make connections between the making of art and the teaching of it.
At St. Thomas Aquinas College, the biennial art faculty exhibition provides faculty with a chance to explore new projects or revisit old. This show features the work of all nine art, art therapy and graphic design faculty members and serves as an overview of artist style, concept and media.
FLETCHER CROSSMAN
Fletcher Crossman: Headscapes runs from September 30 through October 27.
A reception for the artist is scheduled for Thursday, October 17, from 4:30 – 6:30 pm. A gallery talk will be given at 5:00 that evening
Fletcher Crossman’s large-scale portraits ask the viewer to contemplate the face as a place of landmarks. Wisdom, experience and decay are writ large through the textured application of acrylic paint, scraped and washed across the surface.
The palettes, both muted and extended, focus bits of light, editing and selectively highlighting each face. At eight feet in height, these portraits dominate the space creating a border of flesh, the silent thoughts of each subject rebounding between the walls. Crossman hopes that in the work viewers can “reflect on the beauty that can be found in prosaic and decaying things — which includes ourselves as much as our surroundings.”
Included in the exhibition are portraits from his Headscapes series. Originally from London, Crossman currently teaches art at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in the Bronx.
MARGARET NOEL
Margaret Noel: Interstate runs from September 3 through September 22
A reception for the artist is scheduled for Thursday, September 12, from 4:30 – 6:30 pm. A gallery talk will be given at 5:30 that evening
Margaret Noel’s work fluctuates in time between the past and the present and between fast and slow art-making techniques. Her compositions in ink, collage and encaustic document the decaying industrial architecture seen as one drives through towns in the northeast. In the work collected for Interstate, Noel specifically documents her commute between Brooklyn and Kutztown, in Pennsylvania, and the structures visible to her from her car.
Noel begins her process with rapid drawings made on location, then constructs paintings in her studio using collage and encaustic, a painting technique in which she carefully builds up a thick surface of beeswax and pigment. This alternation between quick and slow processes mirrors the history of her subject matter, factories and man made structures that were quickly built and are slowly decaying.
Included in the exhibition are portions of Exquisite Interstate, a 34-foot scroll Noel completed while traveling from Pennsylvania to Montana. This work brings to mind Jack Kerouac’s On the Road scroll as well as the unfurling of the highway itself, presenting the landscape as a ribbon from city to city.
Noel is an Associate Professor of Fine Art at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania and has a studio in Brooklyn, NY.
