Sculptor Rona Pondick and painter Robert Feintuch have been an item since 1975, and have been notable presences in the art world since the ’80s.

Painter Robert Feintuch and sculptor Rona Pondick pose with some of their work at the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

But only since February 2017 has it been possible to see a substantial selection of both their work combined in one exhibition. And only now has that exhibition come to �ֲ���ý, where Feintuch is in his 42nd and final year on the art and visual culture faculty.

Opening with a 6 p.m. gallery talk and reception on Oct. 27 at the Museum of Art, the exhibition Rona Pondick and Robert Feintuch: Heads, Hands, Feet; Sleeping, Holding, Dreaming, Dying was organized by museum director Dan Mills and made its debut nine months ago at the .

“ and each use themselves as a model, yet neither makes self-portraits per se,” Mills says. “While their work is materially very different, this approach to making work and the psychological interest in the body and gesture that they have in common fascinated me.

“I started thinking about exhibiting their work for �ֲ���ý, where Robert has taught for many years but rarely shown and where Rona has never shown. And as I was developing this idea, I realized that no one had ever organized an exhibition investigating” that common interest.

“It became clear that this is the exhibition we should present at �ֲ���ý.”

“White Beaver” (2009–11) by Rona Pondick, painted bronze, edition 2/3. Courtesy of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London/Paris/Salzburg; Sonnabend Gallery, New York; Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston; Zevitas/Marcus Gallery, Los Angeles; and the artist.

Until Mills proposed the idea a few years ago, Feintuch and Pondick hadn’t considered a joint exhibition — even though each is intimately familiar with the other’s work (they even had adjacent studios for many years).

“A few people who followed our work very closely talked about seeing relationships between the work,” says Feintuch. But, he continues, “on a superficial level, we kept seeing the differences.”

Mills was one of the ones who saw the relationships. “They believe the body speaks,” he says. “They seek to represent subjective experience and psychological states through a physical vocabulary comprising aspects such as gesture, posture, naturalism, and expressive distortion.”

Pondick’s sculptures combine forms from the human body — usually her own — with those from non-human animals. ARTnews critic Lilly Wei ascribed “disquieting psychological reverberations” to her sculptures, reverberations that “paradoxically attract and repel.”

Feintuch, meanwhile, situates unheroic older men in dreamlike settings that express vanity and vulnerability, and his work is consistently regarded as comic and rooted in psychological machinations.

“Feet Up” (2013) by Robert Feintuch, polymer emulsion on honeycomb panel. Courtesy of Sonnabend Gallery, New York; Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston; Zevitas/Marcus Gallery, Los Angeles; and the artist.

Now residents of New York City, they met at the Yale University School of Art. The �ֲ���ý exhibition comprises nine sculptures and a series of prints created by Pondick between 1998 and 2013, and 11 paintings that Feintuch made between 2007 and 2016.

Juxtaposing their artworks was something of a revelation to the couple. “One of the things that we’ve both been really struck by, between installing the show in Utah and then again here, is that it feels like our work goes together in a very interesting way,” says Pondick.

“Even though the work is approached so differently and our sensibilities are so different, we share so many interests that we complement each other in ways that are surprising to us. And that is both shocking and kind of intriguing,” given how long they’ve been together.

“We’re both interested in having people interpret the work,” says Feintuch — that is, look beyond the physical presence of a given piece. “That physical presence makes a lot of the meaning, but we also want people to think about what the work is about and what it feels like psychologically.

“I’ve had a wide range of interpretations of my work across the years, and none of them seem wrong to me. A lot of visual art is ambiguous in its meanings, and it’s one of the things I love about it.”

Art-historical references lend another dimension of meaning to their work. Pondick’s animal/human hybrid sculptures have a long lineage across many cultures, and Feintuch’s paintings often play with historical mythological and religious imagery.

Similarly, each combines age-old and cutting-edge technologies. Pondick employs three-dimensional scanning, computer imaging, carving, hand modeling, and traditional metal casting. Feintuch’s preparation for a painting has often mated hand-drawing from life with drawing on the computer and manipulating photographic material.

“Marmot” (1998-99) by Rona Pondick, silicone rubber, exhibition copy, edition of 6. Courtesy of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London/Paris/ Salzburg; Sonnabend Gallery, New York; Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston; Zevitas/Marcus Gallery, Los Angeles; and the artist.

“Feintuch’s a terrific painter, whatever the subject,” Cate McQuaid wrote in a 2012 Boston Globe review. His works “wrestle with the debilitations and humiliations mortality imposes on us, but also with the possibility of grace, which we find in beauty and in hope.”

Reviewing “Heads, Hands, Feet” for Salt Lake City’s SLUG Magazine, Kathy Zhou wrote that Pondick recognizes the viewer’s “tendency to search for artworks’ distinctly human elements, and she embraces it, toying with the human form and the psychological themes it evokes in her audience.

“Her resulting sculptures are at times fantastical, at times unsettling and thoroughly difficult from which to avert your gaze.”

“Fat Hercules” (2011) by Robert Feintuch, polymer emulsion on honeycomb panel. Courtesy of Sonnabend Gallery, New York; Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston; Zevitas/Marcus Gallery, Los Angeles; and the artist.

Feintuch is a senior lecturer in the art and visual culture department. It’s fitting that he’s taking part in a �ֲ���ý exhibition himself during his final year as an active faculty member: Since he began at �ֲ���ý, in 1976, he has advised studio art majors as they spend their final year at �ֲ���ý making work for the annual Senior Thesis Exhibition. (For many of those years, Associate Professor Pamela Johnson has advised the seniors during the fall semester, and Feintuch during the winter.)

Pondick has co-taught with her husband at the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts, in Salzburg, Austria. “I’ve witnessed how easily Robert can connect in a very quick way with a student,” she says, “understanding what they should be looking at and asking them questions, so that they can start asking the questions that you need to ask when you’re in the studio alone.

“And it’s not easy to forget about your own prejudices and the way that you think, and say, ‘This is not the way I think, but how would I approach this?’ So that you can then help your students develop.”

“Which is one of the pleasures of teaching,” Feintuch responds. “It’s fun doing that.”

Artist and activist Betty LaDuke will give two talks and lead a participatory workshop to accompany an exhibition of her paintings and sketches, Latin American Transitions: The Art of Betty LaDuke, on display at the �ֲ���ý College Chapel now through March 26.

She’ll offer her first presentation, an informal gallery talk, at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 7, in the chapel, College Avenue. Her second lecture, titled Honor the Earth: A Multicultural Spiritual Journey, will be given at 4:30 p.m. Monday, March 8 (International Women’s Day), in Skelton Lounge, Chase Hall, Campus Avenue, �ֲ���ý College. This talk will present her story as an artist who sees and portrays the world spiritually, politically and aesthetically in shades of struggle and hope. LaDuke will lead a two-hour participatory workshop on art, activism and spirituality at 7 p.m., March 8. Preregistration is required for the workshop. The public is invited free of charge to attend the talks, the exhibit and the workshop, all sponsored by the Office of the Chaplain. For more information or to preregister for the workshop, call 207-786-8272.

To LaDuke, art and life are intimately interwoven. Her journeys around the world, particularly through Latin America, Asia and Africa, have inspired her to produce sketches and acrylic paintings that document the survival of hope in the face of great political, military and economic disturbance. Particularly moved by women’s diverse creative expressions, LaDuke’s art emphasizes the hope that fuels the struggle toward self-determination and dignity.

Focusing on the common concerns that bond people across the globe — relationships to land, food production, family and community — LaDuke’s art has explored the experiences of people in Nicaragua, Chile, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Chiapas, Mexico, among other places.

An acclaimed printmaker and painter, the Bronx-born LaDuke has spent as many years advocating for social change, racial equality, the rights of women, children and the environment.

She’ll offer her first presentation, an informal gallery talk, at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 7, in the chapel, College Avenue. Her second lecture, titled Honor the Earth: A Multicultural Spiritual Journey, will be given at 4:30 p.m. Monday, March 8 (International Women’s Day), in Skelton Lounge, Chase Hall, 56 Campus Avenue. This talk will present her story as an artist who sees and portrays the world spiritually, politically and aesthetically in shades of struggle and hope.

LaDuke will lead a two-hour participatory workshop on art, activism and spirituality at 7 p.m., March 8. Preregistration is required for the workshop. The public is invited free of charge to attend the talks, the exhibit and the workshop, all sponsored by the Office of the Chaplain. For more information or to preregister for the workshop, call 207-786-8272.

To LaDuke, art and life are intimately interwoven. Her journeys around the world, particularly through Latin America, Asia and Africa, have inspired her to produce sketches and acrylic paintings that document the survival of hope in the face of great political, military and economic disturbance. Particularly moved by women’s diverse creative expressions, LaDuke’s art emphasizes the hope that fuels the struggle toward self-determination and dignity.

Focusing on the common concerns that bond people across the globe — relationships to land, food production, family and community — LaDuke’s art has explored the experiences of people in Nicaragua, Chile, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Chiapas, Mexico, among other places.

An acclaimed printmaker and painter, the Bronx-born LaDuke has spent as many years advocating for social change, racial equality, the rights of women, children and the environment.

In Boston, Babb is especially well-known for cityscapes that include street-level views and a series depicting the city as seen from a helicopter, such as “Copley Plunge.” In 1996, working in consultation with the doctors who performed the first successful kidney transplant, Babb finished a mural of that historic operation that is displayed in the Courtway Library at Harvard Medical School.

Babb’s work is represented in the collections of the �ֲ���ý museum, Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum, the DeCordova Museum (Lincoln, Mass.) and numerous corporations and individuals. His exhibition venues have included the prestigious Sherry French Gallery and Gerold Wunderlich and Co. (both in New York City), Kathleen Dolan Fine Art (Boston), the Art Complex Museum (Duxbury, Mass.) and the Contemporary Art Center (Cincinnati, Ohio).

In Maine, he has shown at the Portland Museum of Art, the Ogunquit Art Museum, Frost Gully Gallery, Round Top Center for the Arts and Maine Coast Artists, among other venues. Intimate Wilderness is the fifth �ֲ���ý exhibition representing Babb.

The �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art was founded to preserve the nation’s largest repository of Marsden Hartley drawings and other items relating to this important artist, a Lewiston native. Its holdings include a robust print collection and notable works by Maine artists with national significance, such as Dahlov Ipcar, the late William Thon, Neil Welliver and Charles Hewitt.

The flagship museum for the Maine Art Museum Trail, the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art is located in the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St. Admission is free. The museum is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. and 1 p.m.-5 p.m. Sun. The museum is closed Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

A member of the  �ֲ���ý art faculty whose work has received prominent exhibitions in America and Europe, Robert Feintuch discusses his paintings at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 14, in Room 104, Olin Arts Center.

Based in New York, Feintuch achieves a clarity and brightness that, paradoxically, deepen the mystery of his images. His best-known works include self-portraits set in cryptic, sometimes humorous, circumstances that find the artist particularly vulnerable — asleep, nude or literally with his pants down.

“Many of these images could be moments in a narrative sequence selected from quotidian, lived life,” stated the catalog for Feintuch’s 2001 solo exhibition at the , in Boston. “But the cropping and stillness of the compositions, and [their] luminosity . . . make it clear that the images are metaphorically open and psychologically suggestive.”

Feintuch has exhibited his work at the CRG Gallery in New York, the Jewish Museum in San Francisco and the Venice Biennale, as well as galleries and museums in Cologne, Germany, and Verona and Bologna, Italy, among other venues.

Sponsored by the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art, this event is free and open to the public. For more information about the lecture, please call 207-786-6158.

Victoria Wyeth has developed an in-depth study of Andrew Wyeth’s working process used in creating egg tempera paintings. The exhibition features “Her Room” the first Wyeth painting acquired by the Farnsworth Art Museum of Rockland in 1964. Visitors of the exhibit will have an opportunity to learn how this painting was created.

Also shown will be 15 preparatory studies for this painting from Andrew and Betsy Wyeth’s personal collection, from the Farnsworth and now on deposit at the Wyeth Center. The studies offer a step-by-step look at Andrew Wyeth’s working process, showing the progression from his first rudimentary pencil drawings to detailed explorations in watercolor. After resolving every compositional detail, Andrew Wyeth began painting the final work in tempera, a slow, stroke-by-stroke painting process. The exhibition will be accompanied by Victoria Wyeth’s own photographs of her grandfather.

The exhibition was organized through the museum’s internship program in collaboration with the �ֲ���ý Department of Art. For more information, call 207-786-6158.

Grey portrays the human body as translucent, revealing complex anatomical systems rendered with medical precision and interweaving these with glowing subtle energies. By using visual metaphors of transparency and inner light, his paintings allude to the process of becoming spiritually aware, holy and enlightened. Grey spent several years employed by Harvard Medical School in the medical museum and anatomy lab, preparing cadavers and studying the human organism. He came to see in the human anatomy a microcosm of the many systems and levels of order in nature. At Harvard, he also worked briefly with researchers in experiments investigating the body’s healing energies.

The subject of Grey’s art centers on the nature of consciousness and vision states. He sees himself as continuing in the tradition of visionary artists like William Blake, Pavel Tchelichew, Jean Delville and Gustave Klimt. Grey’s paintings point to the invisible spiritual world, which has been described by mystics. Grey applies his unique perspective to images of archetypal human experiences from birth to death. In doing so, he employs a variety of familiar religious symbols and figures, including the ubiquitous halo, the flaming aura, the chakra, Adam and Eve, Buddha-like figures, demons and angels.

The exhibition of 18, mostly life-sized works includes selections of narrative paintings, portrayals of prayer, meditation and shamanistic ritual and the artist’s seminal work, “The Sacred Mirrors.”

The museum’s lower gallery features two exhibitions which highlight the permanent collection. The first features works from the permanent collection, including works by Marsden Hartley, Rembrandt, Picasso and Matisse. The second features figure drawings. Regular museum hours are Tuesday-Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and Sundays 1-5 p.m. The public is welcome and admission is free. School and other group tours are available by appointment. For more information call (207) 786-6158.