Photographer and filmmaker Eduardo Angel will present the first in this year’s Photographers’ Lecture Series on March 27.
The lecture will be held at 6:30 p.m. in the Dodge Room, Reed Campus Center, and like all the talks in the series, is free and open to the public.
“Eduardo Angel’s specialty is digital video and it’s going to be a much more technical ‘how to’ lecture,” wrote Fine and Performing Arts Teacher Ed Hing, who organizes the series. “It should be very informative and fast paced.”
Whether it’s about food or the pace of living, sometimes the best thing you can do is slow down.
That’s what Williston Northampton School faculty member Natania Hume believes. And when it comes to her custom pottery, time and quality go hand in hand.
Her focus on detail and dedication to the craft has now led her to a new collaboration—one that will potentially bring her work into homes across the country.
Introducing German choral music to high school students is no easy thing.
In fact, when Joshua Harper wanted the Caterwaulers to sing a piece by Franz Schubert for his first concert with them in 2013, the only edition he could find was overly complex—not a good fit for a male concert chorus.
So he did what came naturally; he edited and engraved a brand new version.
“It’s an accessible Schubert piece and an easy introduction to German,” Mr. Harper said. “This is something that grew out of my work with the Caterwaulers, the first group to sing my edition of it.”
Engraving is a process of “setting” the music through an electronic notation program, Mr. Harper noted. The process can then make the music easier for singers to learn.
“The reason I needed to create a fresh edition is because the current edition is hard to read,” he explained in an email. “So I set the music myself from scratch, cleaning things up, making it a readable edition that we could access immediately.”
On Display: February 3-27
Reception: Saturday, Feb. 21, 1:30-3:30 p.m.
Two friends and fellow artists—who use their art to examine the figurative and ephemeral—are collaborating on an exhibit that will be on display in the Grubbs Gallery through the month of February.
Freelance book illustrator and designer Rhys Davies uses drawings and collages, dotted with over-sized figures, to create works with both literal and figurative meanings. In his artist’s statement, he noted that he has been inspired by landscapes and the history of his native Wales. “Having lived for years in the countryside, I feel I can draw upon a ‘deep well’ of subject matter and imagery,” he wrote.
Mr. Davies, who lives in Amherst, has a degree in fine art with a specialty in painting, and studied at both the Cardiff College of Art, and Wimbledon School of Art in London, from which he received a BA with honors. He has exhibited at schools such as Wimbledon SFA, Ruskin College, and Middlesex University Gallery, as well as several galleries in Denmark. He has also shown at locally at Wunderarts, Pineapple Dance Studio, and Hope and Feathers, all in Amherst.
Jimmy Ilson’s most recent drawings, assemblages, and sculptures are visual paradoxes that often reflect the nature of Taoist philosophy. Last year, he headed a project in Easthampton High School called “How do You Say Goodbye?” where students in his advanced fine arts class scrawled phrases all over their school building, which was slated to be demolished.
“What you’re doing here is this kind of momentary thing. It’s ephemeral,” Mr. Ilson was quoted as saying in a Daily Hampshire Gazette article about the project. “It’s like fireworks — it’s there and then it’s gone.”
Mr. Ilson graduated from the University of Wisconsin in Madison with an BFA in painting and earned an MFA in Printmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute. Having grown up in New York City, he notes that early visits to Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica” in the Museum of Modern Art were some of the most formative aspects of his artistic life. He presently teaches art at Cathedral High School and also teaches T’ai chi throughout the Pioneer Valley.
On Display: November 1 – December 18
Reception: Saturday, November 15, 1:30-3:30 p.m.
The work of David Marshall will be on display in the Grubbs Gallery from November 1 until December 18, when Williston Northampton School closes for winter break.
Mr. Marshall, a Northampton-based artist, describes the act of painting as “rewarding because of its moments of heightened awareness and its quiet contemplation of nature’s beauty.” His paintings—of landscapes, figures, and still lifes—aim to capture fleeting light in the moment, how objects melt into each other, and how they separate from their surroundings.
“If one paints the parts, they rarely add up to produce a unified whole,” he wrote in a statement about his work. “Subtle changes in light—even in a studio with natural light—dramatically affect the overall tonality of a subject. “
For the Grubbs Gallery show, Mr. Marshall collected some of his most recent and favorite work with paintings that explore two themes: nude figures in landscapes, including smaller studies, and the ever-changing nature of water.
“Painting moving water is something I’ve tried on and off over the years but never with much dedication,” Mr. Marshall noted. “I decided to work on my ability to paint water (specifically some of the smaller rivers in Chesterfield) as the snow began to melt last spring…I did have a few paintings in the area of the Chesterfield Gorge where I might have captured an effect.”
Mr. Marshall has studied panting at the Massachusetts College of Art, Art Students League, and Brooklyn College, where he earned an M.F.A. under the tutelage of Lennart Anderson. He’s had both solo and group shows in galleries in New York City, Philadelphia, and throughout New England. Mr. Marshall also helped create The Oxbow Gallery in Northampton, a venue for both local and nationally renowned painters.
On Display: October 5-November 1
Reception: Saturday, October 18, 1:30-3:30 p.m.
As an aerobatic pilot, Lise Lemeland draws upon what she sees to convey the experience of flight. In her artist’s statement, she notes that she’s long been interested in visually complex patterns, and the visual cues that are a crucial part of flying aerobatics.
“This extreme type of flying requires intense focus and sensatory interpretation,” she wrote in her statement. “When I am in the studio, I am devoted to finding ways to translate these breathtaking and disorienting experiences of flying.”
Ms. Lemeland received her BA from Stanford University, her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and her MFA from Hunter College. In 2006, she received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, followed by a grant in 2009 to flight as part of her artistic research, as well as a scholarship for aerobatic training from the International Aerobatic Club.
Her paintings have been exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, in Washington, DC, where they are also part of the permanent collection, and Gallery 22E41 in NYC.
When Ms. Chambers is away, the seventh graders will play…with the Upper School Sculpture I that is.
With their art teacher, Rachel Chambers, on a field trip during their Thursday class, the Middle Schoolers paired up with older students to learn how to sculpt, pour, and set a mold in a process known as bad relief casting.
All around the Reed studio, students were helping each other carve and shape forms. In one corner, a group of Upper School boys began filling buckets with plaster, while their younger counterparts mixed the white goo with their hands.
An abstract painter who experienced a devastating studio fire over the summer is dedicating her fall show at the Williston Northampton School to those who have helped her rebuild.
“Circle Dance,” works by Marlene Rye, will be on display from September 1-29 in the Grubbs Gallery, Reed Campus Center. A reception for the artist will be held on Saturday, September 20, from 1:30-3:30 p.m. in Grubbs.
On August 4, a fire broke out in the Paragon Arts and Industry Building on 150 Pleasant Street in Easthampton where Ms. Rye has her studio. Although quickly extinguished, the fire and the resulting water caused damage throughout the building—including the studio where Ms. Rye kept her pastel drawings.
“I waited for four hours to go into my studio to find them, in a wet box, but most of them were fine,” she wrote in an email. “It was such a huge relief, as they have been my main focus for the past year!”
As a result of the fire, paints, mats, frames, and a camera were all destroyed, leaving Ms. Rye to worry about whether she could move forward with planned fall shows and art camps. A GoFundMe campaign quickly raised the funds she needed, while friends and supporters helped her clean out her studio and move her work into storage.
