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Friends and colleagues of the late Ellen Seeling pay tribute to this esteemed member of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College theater faculty with an exhibit of her work that opens with a gathering at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 12, in the college’s Ladd Library.

Presenters at the gathering will include students, colleagues and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ President Elaine Tuttle Hansen. In addition to photographs documenting Seeling at work and the spectrum of set and costume designs she did for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, several of her costumes themselves will be displayed. The exhibition runs through the end of the month.

A designer, playwright and director celebrated for an intrepid style and bedrock commitment to teaching theater, the 50-year-old Seeling succumbed to cancer at her home in South Portland on Dec. 29. The exhibition illustrates a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ career embracing seven years, 16 shows and countless students inspired by Seeling’s energy and talent.

“These are big shoes to be filled,” says one colleague, Katalin Vecsey, a lecturer in the theater department and vocal coach for the college’s theatrical productions.

Vecsey explains how Seeling made obvious her knack for engaging a room full of people before she was even hired at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. In her presentation to the faculty search committee, Seeling handed out pins, pieces of foam core and other materials, and asked everyone in the room to try building a model set for the play Blood Wedding.

Seeling directed a number of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ productions and adapted one, The Sea Wall, from a novel by Marguerite Duras. But she was best-known as a designer, and her work — including the puppets that appeared in The Sea Wall and other productions — were distinguished by their edginess, expressiveness and versatility.

“Her sets would have flown on Broadway,” Vecsey says. She adds, “She would never compromise her designs” — but at the same time, Seeling encouraged colleagues and students to embrace their own ideas with the same kind of passion.

Seeling was born in Michigan City, Ind. She received a bachelor’s degree in fine arts at the Herron School of Art at Indiana University, and her master’s at Brandeis University. After working as a scenic artist and costume designer, Seeling joined the faculty of St. Lawrence University as assistant professor of stage design in 1987.

She came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 1997 and earned tenure in the Department of Theater and Rhetoric in 2003. At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ she taught a variety of design courses, as well as a course on women in film.

Her first production for the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ theater was Antigone and her last, an autumn 2003 production of Hamlet that included some 40 costumes. In between she tackled productions as diverse as a futuristic Brave New World, a gritty “subUrbia” set in a convenience store parking lot, a puppet-filled Sea Wall and the genteel Victorian Lady Windermere’s Fan.

Outside ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Seeling did design work for Portland’s Mad Horse Theater and for companies in Boston and California.

Her death was a blow to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and to the region’s theater community. “I was so shocked to hear about Ellen,” wrote Lauren Todd, a member of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ class of 1999 who studied with Seeling and is now studying landscape design in graduate school. “She was such a wonderful person and really helped me on my way to entering the design world.”

“I’m really sorry for you as well to have lost such a great colleague.”