Robert Feintuch – News

Donald Lent, artist, teacher, and mentor who built the visual arts program at �ֲ��ý College, dies at age 86

Jay Burns — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 15:13:13 +0000

Dana Professor Emeritus of Art Donald R. Lent, an artist, teacher, and mentor who built the visual arts program at �ֲ��ý, died June 22, 2020, at age 86.

Lent grew up in Marblehead, Mass.; his father was a machinist and union organizer with United Shoe Machinery in Beverly, and his mother was a home-health nurse. He served in the U.S. Army as a Russian translator in Germany, then went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara and B.F.A. and M.F.A. degrees at Yale University.

He returned to UCSB to teach and spent the first decade of his career there, joining the �ֲ��ý faculty as Dana Professor of Art in 1970. He taught painting, drawing, and printmaking at the college and served as department chair. He retired in 1999.

Seen in a circa 1980 photograph, Don Lent, the college’s Dana Professor Emeritus of Art, died June 22, 2020. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

His arrival marked the birth of the visual arts program at �ֲ��ý, said then-President Donald Harward in 2000. “When Professor Lent arrived, there was no sustained major in art, no museum, no systematic courses in painting, drawing, printmaking, ceramics, or photography.

“Few students even had studio experiences, for there weren’t any studios. Professor Lent was the primary architect of those opportunities. He brought together the students, the faculty, the spaces, and the programs.” As the college’s first cohort of art majors were set to graduate in 1973, Lent created the Senior Thesis Exhibition, now an annual and “vital testimony to Professor Lent’s contribution to �ֲ��ý,” said Harward.

Five seniors exhibited their work in that first exhibition: Kitty Kiefer, Beth Russell, Linda Eberhard Dias, Barbara Smith, and Richard Partridge. Lent insisted that the new art major include, for studio artists, a written component as well as artwork, recalls Partridge, a double major in art and biology.

Partridge’s thesis project, drawing on his experience in another new �ֲ��ý arts program, the Modern Dance Company led by Marcy Plavin, was “Dance Movement as Depicted in Certain Static, Two-Dimensional Media,” that media being graphite, charcoal, conte crayon, and chalk on paper.

“Don felt it was an important experience for each us to undergo,” says Partridge. “He made certain we understood the challenges a thesis would bring and helped us stay focused to achieve our goal.”

Richard Patridge’s self-drawn portrait in the 1973 �ֲ��ý Mirror.

Importantly, Lent offered encouragement and leadership to these first art majors.

“He was a calm presence in charge,” Partridge says. “He was a true educator — dedicated to quietly helping each of us develop our own artistic expressions and expand our knowledge and experience.”

That support inspired Partridge to take a risk for his senior Mirror portrait, submitting a self-drawn portrait. And he was rewarded when the yearbook devoted a full page to the drawing.

Another of those pioneering art majors, Kitty Kiefer, recalls taking “Interaction of Color” with Lent, then in his first semester at �ֲ��ý. “I have never been able to ‘un-see’ what I found in that class,” she recalls.

“My view of the world, my perspective, my quiet contemplation — my meditation on the spaces and people around me — were forever enriched.”

“One of my favorite things about �ֲ��ý was buying books at the beginning of each semester,” and for Lent’s first class at �ֲ��ý, the “books” consisted of a small book by Josef Albers, from which the course name was taken; a pot of rubber cement; and a package of colored papers — “hundreds of colors.”

The class met in Hathorn Hall, where Lent “talked about color, and transparencies, vibrations, echoes,” Kiefer recalls. “We went to the Quad, where the leaves were freshly falling from the trees, and made collage from those colors with the colors in our packets. I took every class he taught. I etched, I drew, I collaged. My thesis was about color.

“My view of the world, my perspective, my quiet contemplation — my meditation on the spaces and people around me — were forever enriched. I learned and was exposed to things I had never dreamed of.”

Charles Grosvenor ’74, whose filmmaking credits in Hollywood include producing the beloved Land Before Time animated franchise, recalled Lent’s . “I cannot stress enough the impact Professor Lent had on my �ֲ��ý years and subsequent career. For me he was the ideal professor. I did not want a drinking buddy or ‘pal’ as my mentor. I wanted someone who could teach, elevate, and advise. And all of these things Professor Lent did for me.”

“Mr. Lent didn’t say a lot,” says Kiefer. “But what he did say, at least to me, popped and opened me. Then I would work with the skill being taught and learned, watch what others did, and go back to the blank paper or canvas in front of me. “

Grosvenor’s classmate Norton Virgien also parlayed his �ֲ��ý art major into a career as a director and producer of animated films, including two Rugrats feature movies. Like Partridge, he found in Lent a “professor who was really interested in each of us and in helping us find what we might be good at.”

Lent and other faculty members, Virgien continued, instilled a “sense of possibilities….�ֲ��ý was a place where you could try most anything you wanted to try, and there were professors who would offer incredible support and mentoring. When I got out into the world, I sort of dove into the bigger ponds with enough self-confidence to at least try a lot of things.”

Don Lent gestures toward students working on the Lisbon Street mural during Short Term 1971. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

In 1971 Lent gave these first �ֲ��ý art students a formative experience by letting them take the lead in creating a mural on a blank brick wall on Lisbon Street. The mural’s narrative was straightforward: pedestrians moving through familiar Lewiston places. “I wanted the mural to connect to people in town,” Lent said. Figures of pedestrians moved between silhouettes of downtown features, including the onion domes of the Kora Temple and the spires of the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul.

�ֲ��ý had just approved an art major, and Short Term was just coming into its own, making it a heady time for the pioneering art students, recalled Jonathan Lowenberg ’74, who came to �ֲ��ý to major in chemistry but switched to art partly because of the mural project. “It was a great dynamic,” he recalls. “We were enthusiastic about the major, and the project was something completely new for all of us.”

An unidentified man, perhaps then-Dean of the College James Carignan ’61, films students working on the Lisbon Street mural during Short Term 1971. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

Knowing that Virgien was interested in filmmaking, Lent invited him to document the project with his Super 8 movie camera. For Virgien, it was “the first time that I had ever put together a movie with that kind of subject that people responded to.

“The thought processes that went into telling that story 30 years ago are still the ones I use today. When I am directing, looking at a group of artists assembled to make a movie, figuring out which ones would be good at which assignments and which artists could bring that certain Rugrat to life, that’s exactly what Don Lent was doing back then in finding film in me.”

(A few years later, the mural was removed during building renovations, “Maybe,” Lent reflected some time later, “the mural was more like an installation, designed for a specific place and time. After a while, it just didn’t fit into the plan.”)

Though the Lisbon Street mural created by Don Lent and his students in 1971 was removed decades ago, evidence of its existence can been seen in chips of white and yellow paint that cling to the building’s brickwork. (Jay Burns/�ֲ��ý College)

Now a senior lecturer emeritus in art and visual culture, painter Robert Feintuch was appointed to the �ֲ��ý faculty in 1976, joining Lent; part-time ceramics instructor Nancy Margolis; and art historian David Smith. Feintuch remembered thinking as he was interviewing for the job that he had “no chance. Artist-teachers often hire people whose work relates to their own — an occupational hazard not limited to the arts — and my work at that time, at first glance, could be seen as being in opposition to Don’s.”

Yet Lent did hire Feintuch — a testament to how Lent went about building the studio program. “Don was unusually open, intellectually curious, and widely read.” Pragmatic, too, Feintuch adds. With unerring support from the late Carl Benton Straub, dean of the faculty from 1974 to 1991, “Don tended to hire studio people part-time — kind of sneaking them in — and then, with Carl’s help, slowly getting the college to make serious commitments to them.”

In the early 1970s, Lent painted Scenes from the Canterbury Tales, a 5-foot by 40-foot mural located for many years along the walkway into Memorial Commons in Chase Hall. The project typified Lent’s creative approach, drawing on connections and relationships in his work.

Photographed in 2013, the Canterbury Tales–inspired mural along the walkway into Memorial Commons was created by Don Lent in 1971–72. (Jay Burns/�ֲ��ý College)

The idea for the mural goes back to Depression-era ideas about the utility of public art. One of Lent’s mentors at UCSB was Rico Lebrun, who had painted murals in New York City and elsewhere as part of the Work Projects Administration in the 1930s. Lebrun worked with a young artist named Gridley Barrows, who would later join the Auburn-based architectural firm Harriman Associates, which has long done design work at �ֲ��ý.

In 1970, �ֲ��ý enlisted Harriman, with Barrows as lead architect, to renovate various Chase spaces. In 2013, Lent recounted for �ֲ��ý Magazine how Barrows, perhaps recalling his WPA experience, suggested that a mural would do just fine on the wall above a walkway leading into Memorial Commons. Lent was the artist he had in mind for the job. But for Lent, the space, which both sloped and curved, presented a challenge.

“It is hard to create something that ‘reads’ well both close up and from a distance,” he said. “Gridley promoted simplicity — not trying to make things too detailed.”

Lent invited family, faculty, students, friends, neighbors, and other colleagues into the project as models, including attorney and art critic Phil Isaacson ’47; businessman and humanitarian Shep Lee; banker Bill Sayres; Bowdoin professors Elliott Schwartz (music) and Tom Cornell (art), and Cornell’s wife, Judith; Cynthia Howland, an arts advocate who lives in Brunswick; then-�ֲ��ý history colleague Christine Holden; two of Lent’s children, Jennifer and Michael; �ֲ��ý students Charles Tetro ’69 and Lynda Litchfield ’71; John Ridland, a UCSB art colleague; and a dog, Molly. Lent cast himself as the Knight. (The Chase mural is now preserved in storage.)

In his Scenes from the Canterbury Tales, Don Lent cast himself (from left) as the Knight. At front right is his son, Michael Lent. In the background are late Bowdoin professors Elliott Schwartz (left) and Tom Cornell. (Mike Bradley/�ֲ��ý College)

At �ֲ��ý, Lent also created sets and costumes for theater productions including The Trojan Women, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Caucasian Chalk Circle, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He wrote for the progressive weekly Maine Times; illustrated Heat Lightning, a collection of poems by Alan Stephens published in 1967; and published numerous book reviews. In the early 1980s, he designed the commemorative medal presented to recipients of the college’s Benjamin Elijah Mays Award honoring outstanding alumni accomplishment and achievement.

Lent brought together students and faculty and built a studio art program. “We were free to develop an identity,” Lent said in 1989.

In much the same way the faculty of the �ֲ��ý history department, in the years before Pettengill Hall opened, forged an identity in ramshackle Canham House, the nascent art program, put down roots at 85 Russell Street, a former farmhouse across the street from campus that today houses ILS offices.

There, Lent brought together students and faculty and built a studio art program. “We were free to develop an identity,” Lent said in 1989, three years after Olin Arts Center, the department’s current home, opened. “We were left alone to grow.” But not without support, he said, praising then–President Thomas Hedley Reynolds for empowering his young faculty to effect positive change for the college, “to bring about change in [our] own way.”

In this circa 1980 photograph, Don Lent works with a �ֲ��ý student in the department’s former farmhouse home at 85 Russell St. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

As an artist, Lent created paintings, etchings, and drawings on a broad range of subjects from still life to farm animals to architectural forms. Notably, his series of paintings of bridges became a recurring theme, inspired by the geometric patterns he observed during commutes and travels to and from �ֲ��ý over various river bridges.

“Painting is a shared experience,” he told �ֲ��ý Magazine in 1984. “It’s doing something, finding something, and having someone else go along with me as far as they want to go, to the extent that they want to think about it.”

He exhibited throughout the world, with solo exhibitions at the Esther Bear Gallery in Santa Barbara; Maine Coast Artists in Rockport; the University of Maine; State University of New York, Binghamton; Bowdoin College Museum of Art; and �ֲ��ý College Museum of Art. Group exhibitions included the Grolier Society, New York; the Barone Gallery, New York; Harvard University; New York Public Library; Long Beach (Calif.) State College; Matin Village Gallery, London; and, with art colleagues Robert Feintuch, Paul Heroux, Joseph Nicoletti, the 1989 exhibition New Visions at the �ֲ��ý museum.

In retirement, he lived in Dover, N.H., maintained a local studio, and exhibited widely in local galleries. He served two terms in the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

Survivors include his wife, Robin Lent; children Michael Lent, Jennifer Lent, Jesse Lent, Charlotte Lent, and Lucy Lent Barretto; stepdaughters Katherine Torriero and Abigail Davis; four grandchildren; and their families. A memorial service will be held at a later date.

To view the complete obituary for Donald Lent, please visit .

A couple for 42 years, artists open their first duo exhibition at �ֲ��ý

Doug Hubley — Fri, 27 Oct 2017 13:21:10 +0000

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.”

Meet the student artists, and view their work, featured in the 2017 Senior Thesis Exhibition

Doug Hubley — Fri, 28 Apr 2017 14:00:25 +0000

“Different art forms can speak to each other in powerful ways, and that’s always important to remember,” says photographer and studio art major Calvin Reedy ’17 of Wilton, Conn.

Reedy was reminded of this truth last fall, when he was starting to feel stuck as he made a series of group portraits for the 2017 Senior Thesis Exhibition. Pamela Johnson, an associate professor of art and visual culture who advises the senior studio art majors during the fall semester, helped shake him loose.

17 Senior Artists in 2017

View artwork and artists’ statements from the Senior Thesis Exhibition, showing at the �ֲ��ý Museum of Art through May 27.

Johnson, says Reedy, showed him “a clipping of a New York Times photograph of dancers — they were moving together as their bodies were pressed up against each other — and she encouraged me to look at dance to see how bodies interact and move together.

“While it makes perfect sense, I hadn’t thought of that before because I was so focused on looking mainly at photography for inspiration.”

�ֲ��ý’ senior exhibition is always a lively conversation among genres. But this year’s edition, which runs through May 27, is especially rich, with 17 artists represented.

“The show includes drawings, paintings, prints, collages, sculptures, photographs, and vessel-based ceramics, as well as variants that are somewhere in between some of those mediums,” says Robert Feintuch, senior lecturer in AVC and adviser to the artists in the winter semester.

Cash Hadean ’18 of New Orleans inspects a sculpture by Jose Herrera during the April 7 opening of the Senior Thesis Exhibition. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Of course, the senior show always provokes lively, and valuable, conversation among artists too, making the studio wing of the Olin Arts Center a happening place — especially as the exhibition opening draws near and the scramble to finish work is on.

This year, “we interacted with each other frequently by leaving studio doors open and asking that others look at what we were working on,” says Mary Grace Schwalbe of Concord, N.C., whose paintings and drawings challenge notions of feminine beauty.

“It was great that there were various mediums among us, because it exposed us to different ways of working and made us consider the different thought processes behind art making.”

Feintuch, says Reedy, “is great at identifying themes in our work, and identifying what works well so that we can have a cohesive body of work for the show.”

For the exhibiting artists, preparing for the show is a lesson in seeing the forest as well as the trees. “Preparing a body of work that was coherent forced me to place restrictions on my art-making process so that the pieces felt connected,” says Schwalbe.

“Working on individual pieces for classes in the past, I didn’t have to think about how what I was working on would interact with the other pieces I had produced, but this was obviously a huge consideration during thesis.”

A print by Jackson Whitehouse ’17 is displayed during the Senior Thesis Exhibition in the Museum of Art. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Feintuch, says Reedy, “is great at identifying themes in our work, and identifying what works well so that we can have a cohesive body of work for the show.” Under Feintuch’s guidance, Reedy worked to ensure that a video piece complemented his still images — “not only with the same visual aesthetic, but also with the same quietness and softness that comes through in the photographs.”

Carolina González Valencia, Mellon Diversity and Faculty Renewal Postdoctoral Fellow in AVC, suggested that Reedy branch out into video and consulted with him along the way.

“My photography led me to video work, and maybe that will one day lead to performance, installation, or something else.” Reedy says. “Experimenting with this new medium taught me that artists, like everyone else, are not just one thing.”

Meet the artists participating in the 2017 Senior Thesis Exhibition:

+Abigail Abbott

��ǳٳ�’s series of still-lifes of vases of dried sunflowers evolved last semester from the sketches of the flowers she completed every day for a month. Over time she introduced new variables to the subject — different vases, tables, backgrounds, and lighting. “With every painting I finished, I was able to see elements I could not see before,” Abbott says.

As she experimented with the elements of her paintings through the academic year, the resulting changes “offer a unique visual representation of my struggle and progress over time.” And, Abbott notes, she found herself “moving towards abstraction organically, without consciously deciding to.”

“The Evolution of a Still Life” (2017), oil on canvas by Abigail Abbott.

+Hanna Bayer

��’s paintings are physically large to emphasize the confidence, strength, and pain that many women carry with them. Inspired by the energetic physicality of art by Oskar Kokoschka, Ernst Kirchner, and Egon Schiele, Bayer makes work that asks to be connected with and questioned at an intense emotional level.

“Women’s bodies and minds are often separated by politicians, the media, and businesses,” Bayer says. “The body is seen as a marketable and malleable object, and the mind, emotion, and humanity are discarded. By creating disjointed panels where the body and the head are not united, I hope to create an obvious tension that speaks to some of that.”

“They Don’t See Me” No. 3 (detail), oil and oil pastel on fragments of theater sets, by Hanna Bayer.

+Alyssa Dole

Dole wanted to make photographs of people and followed that interest to documentary photography and the work of artists like Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams. After a few months of photographing diverse people in different Lewiston neighborhoods, Dole realized she needed to focus her approach. Inspired by an image she made of a Somali shopkeeper, she decided to concentrate on the shops on Lisbon Street and their owners.

“Although I heard many interesting stories throughout this process, I decided that I would like my photographs to stand by themselves rather than be accompanied by text,” Dole says. “I hope that my images can tell a story on their own.”

An inkjet print from the 2017 triptych “253 Lisbon Street” by Alyssa Dole.

+Thomas Garone

Garone has always gravitated to drawing, finding that the act of drawing “allows me to clear my mind and take some time for myself.” His preferred medium is charcoal, in part because it’s versatile and easy to revise — while allowing viewers access to the history of his revisions, in the form of previous marks that couldn’t be completely erased.

Garone maintains a looseness in his work that, he says, “reminds me to never take myself too seriously….I am not afraid to be critical about the work that I am doing.” Drawing “requires a lot of prior thinking, analysis, and a willingness to start over,” he says, “and by leaving evidence of my process it allows the viewers to see my struggle…making art.”

An untitled work from 2017 made in charcoal on paper by Tom Garone.

+Oskar Hall

Hall shoots with an analog camera using black-and-white film. He says, “I want to return to photography’s roots, showing it as a physical process, something more than just a simple image.” His subject is utility cables, the telephone, television, and electrical wiring that’s ubiquitous in the streetscape.

Hall looks for “beauty and different forms in something that has become mundane in today’s world. There is something special about the graphic qualities of these tangled and sporadic wires.” While he conceives of his images as abstractions, Hall composes for the full frame and doesn’t apply any digital manipulation to his images. “I want to be intentional with each photograph I take and each print I make,” he says.

An untitled silver gelatin print dated 2017 by Oskar Hall.

+Cuyler Hedlund

Hedlund made graphic-novel panels that both evoke and reconcile the deterioration and cultural vibrancy that defined New York City in the 1970s. Her protagonist is a stranger whose reactions to New York swing between extremes of infatuation and disgust. The graphic-novel medium, she believes, provides “an ideal marriage between visual and written communication,” Hedlund says. “I wanted to experiment with a medium that emphasized expression, body language, and backgrounds as integral to storytelling.”

She adds, “Working in stages of rough sketch to detailed sketch and then to inked page afforded me a sense of freedom to experiment and let the process of making marks inform the product.”

A selection from “The Only Living Boy in New York” by Cuyler Hedlund, in pen and permanent marker on Bristol board.

+Jose Herrera

Herrera “came to art from a potter’s background: plates, cups, teapots, vases, and pitchers,” he says. In 2015, feeling constrained by the expressive conventions of functional pottery, he turned to making sculpture, adopting a minimalist approach.

More recently, he says, sculpture “has taught me that we understand the world through our bodies and as a result we usually bring bodily references to art. Making pieces that are “silent, sensual, active, united, and monumental,” Herrera embraces contradictions within the work. “Some of my pieces evoke stillness, while others evoke action, some share both qualities,” he says. “Some pieces are rough, while others appear to have a skin stretched over them. But they all are part of the same body of work.”

A 2017 sculpture in red earthenware by José Luis Herrera.

+Colin Moller

�ѴǱ��’s frustration with the representational nature of photography inspired his thesis project. “Unlike in painting where you can construct non-referentially,” he says, “photography is limited to repurposing that which is already present in the world.”

Moller experimented with different approaches to making abstract photography until he recalled that “at its very essence, a photograph is simply a record of light”; unlike painting, where trying to represent light is a primary challenge, photography “enables the direct rendering of light.” Using a single source of light and various types of glass in stacked sequences, Moller created abstract compositions that he photographed.

No. 5 in a series of untitled inkjet prints by Colin Moller.

+John Neufeld

Neufeld’s film photography turns away from today’s “enhanced, airbrushed, and heavily edited images” to emulate the “natural analog images of the past,” he says. “Photos without heavy manipulation are powerful because they are authentic and pure.” At the same time, though, Neufeld’s work “focuses on altering perception and creating the illusion of depth in a two-dimensional medium through the use of reflections.”

He adds, “I am inspired by Lee Friedlander. His images are full of information and demand the full attention of the viewer in order to understand what is going on in the photograph….Friedlander has shown me how an image can make people stop what they are doing and think.”

No. 10 in a series of untitled silver gelatin prints by John Neufeld, 2017.

+Joan Oates

Oates says that color “is the driving factor in my current work. The complex relationships between different colors, shapes, and surfaces truly engage me.” She incorporates multiple canvases into a single piece and works quickly, applying large streaks of bright color with a palette knife. She typically works directly, reacting to the marks that she makes on the canvas, and often reworks her pieces intensively.

“I leave the work rough, exposed, and sometimes warped,” says Oates, who claims artists Gerhard Richter and especially Clyfford Still as inspirations. “But that is me inviting the viewer to see the physical work and, I hope, to experience some of the emotion I put into the paintings.”

Three untitled paintings by Joan Oates, with a sculpture by José Herrera in the foreground.

+Deshun Peoples

Peoples makes functional porcelain whose colors, he explains, “are either pale and subtle or bright and bold.” His ceramics are inspired and influenced by the elegant, sophisticated, and timeless beauty of Chinese Song, Yuan and Qing Dynasty porcelains. Peoples believes that curves are essential to his art, explaining that curves “relate to how I see myself physically, and at its best, a beautiful pot with round, continuous curves is an extension of me.”

He adds, “I’m also interested in juxtaposing blocks of intense colors to create mosaic surfaces on my pots. When I use bright colors and non-traditional surface treatments, I’m trying to marry this source material to a more contemporary commercial ceramic industry.”

“Primary Color Bottle” is a 2017 vessel in porcelain by Deshun Peoples.

+Ashley Pollack

Pollack made collages from original photographs, inkjet-printed on transfer film — chosen for its “flexibility, color retention, and subtle but noticeable reflectivity,” she says — then she disassembled and reassembled them, and presented them on mounts including transparent acrylic sheets.

Working with flowers allowed her to explore a “dichotomy between a beauty informed by delicacy and the freakish quality that I associate strongly with orchids, but see in all flowers,” Pollack says. “When looking at my work, you are, invariably, also looking at yourself because of the reflectivity. I hope that this encourages viewers to have a personal and emotional response to their relationships with abstract ideas about the body, beauty and aversion.”

“Rosaceae,” a 2017 piece by Ashley Pollack, is a diptych made from inkjet prints on transparency film, acrylic sheets, and stainless steel standoffs.

+Calvin Reedy

Reedy received his first camera, a Polaroid, at the age of 5 as a gift from his father. “With that camera,” he says, “I grew up learning how to communicate through imagery.”

The purpose of this body of photographs, he explains, is “to counter America’s narrative about black men — a narrative that is hyper-masculine and untrue — and to also counter the images that dehumanize and perpetuate violence against the black body. My vision for this body of work is to re-contextualize, re-frame, and re-present notions of black masculinity.” Reedy seeks to rewrite the mainstream narrative of black masculinity through his depictions of “friendship, brotherhood, intimacy, and love.”

“The Trinity” is a 2016 inkjet print by Calvin Reedy.

+Mary Grace Schwalbe

Schwalbe makes paintings and drawings that explore and challenge historical portrayals of beauty and womanhood. “Women are expected to suffer separately from men — and in silence,” she says. She employs bright, caustic colors and medical images — based on medical stock photos and slides of tissue samples or bacteria — to reveal the beauty in “what might initially be grotesque or horrifying.”

In short, Schwalbe wants to deepen her viewers’ conceptions of what “beautiful” may entail. “Beauty can often be aesthetic but it permeates deeply through the surface of its subject eliciting a feeling of both awe and fear,” she says. “To me, beauty is terrifying, powerful, and far beyond our control.”

“Fibrosis” is a 2017 image by Mary Grace Schwalbe in oil, spray paint, and dichroic film on birch panel.

+Erin Shea

Shea paints portraits that seek to challenge the carefully curated, polished personas that people project on social media such as Facebook. “While people often display themselves in an idealistic way, that is not what is happening here,” she says. Using herself and her peers as subjects, she isolates “each individual from the outside world, trying to make very physical paintings that read as emotional objects.”

She transforms the two-dimensionality of a photograph into a physical three-dimensional object, and converts her subjects’ “faces and surface expressions so that they are no longer recognizable as individuals” — hoping to uncover the individual’s raw emotions and personality.

An untitled work from 2017 made by Erin Shea from collaged paper, transfer printing, watercolor, gesso, and varnish on canvas.

+Hannah Tardie

Tardie constructs sculptures that have a formal connection to the body. These connections that are established are due in large part to the materials that she uses such as women’s socks and tights. “I’m curious about the interaction between gender performance and body parts, and the connotation of body parts as gendered,” she says.

Tardie implies strictures of gender by manipulating or distorting her materials “to produce objects that read as exaggerated and even mutilated bodies.” She adds, “the success of the sculpture will be entirely dependent on viewers’ own bodily interactions with it . . . I want people to be aware of their bodies in space when they view the work.”

“Seated” is a 2017 sculpture from Hannah Tardie’s “Leg Series.”

+Jackson Whitehouse

Whitehouse uses his body to make prints directly onto on paper. He prints with media such as charcoal powder and black skin-safe paint, as well as with vegetable oil, which changes the light-transmitting quality of the paper in affecting ways.

The prints are “my fear, my vulnerability, my body, and my shame, all represented outside myself,” he says. “The most successful prints look as if they were made effortlessly, and almost as if they occurred naturally on the paper, but the process of making them is always physically challenging,” he explains. “Since there is nearly no erasing the marks I make, the act of printing is high-stakes; one slip or accidental graze of my paint-covered hand and I have to start over from scratch.”

“All I’ve Got” is a 2017 print by Jackson Whitehouse, made with oil and charcoal on paper.

Robert Feintuch, artist of psychologically pointed depictions of the male form, is at large in Greater NYC, Chicago

Doug Hubley — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 17:03:27 +0000

“Feet Up,” a 2013 painting in polymer emulsion on honeycomb panel, 23.75 by 19 inches, by Robert Feintuch. The painting is in the collection of the �ֲ��ý Museum of Art.

The old maxim says, “Show ’em, don’t tell ’em.” But Robert Feintuch, senior lecturer in �ֲ��ý’ art and visual culture department, is doing both in the coming weeks.

Celebrated for quirky, psychologically pointed depictions of the male form that are anything but heroic, Feintuch has four recent images in the group show at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, N.J.

Meanwhile, if you’re in Chicago on Nov. 3, swing by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago .

, the Mana show explores artists’ motivations for making small paintings — in this case meaning works of, say, two or four square feet — and viewers’ reactions to them.

Feintuch is one of the 18 artists who typically work on this scale.

While the Mana show offers the “Reasonable Sized” works, a concurrent show of the “Unreasonable Sized Works” is at Manhattan’s School of Visual Arts Chelsea Gallery.

Art department's Feintuch receives Guggenheim Fellowship

�ֲ��ý News — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:14:45 +0000

Robert Feintuch, a member of the �ֲ��ý College studio art faculty who is celebrated for his droll, evocative paintings, has received a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship.

The New York City-based John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation this year awarded 190 fellowships to artists, scientists and scholars. According to the foundation’s , Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of stellar achievement and exceptional promise for continued accomplishment.

Individual grants in 2008 averaged $43,000, with awards totaling over $8 million.A resident of New York City, Feintuch will use the Guggenheim to support the creation of a body of work for his next exhibition at New York’s CRG Gallery in 2009.

“As both a vital, expressive painter and someone who knows intimately the demands of a career in creative work, Robert is a valuable teacher and mentor to our students and faculty,” says Jill Reich, dean of the faculty at �ֲ��ý.

“We are delighted that he has this support that provides him time to reflect and hone his creative edge.”

A senior lecturer in the art and visual culture department at �ֲ��ý, Feintuch is known for “an extraordinary kind of realist painting that is both conceptual and figurative,” as Artnet.com reviewer David Ebony described it. Feintuch hands his faceless, undressed figures ordinary or comic objects that become mysterious and suggestive in the context of the pictures.

He explains that unbroken stretches of concentrated painting enable him to make his best work. “When I’m working well and I’ve had enough time in the studio, I feel immersed in the stream of images I find, and one begins to lead to another,” he says.

Feintuch has an M.F.A. from Yale University and a B.F.A. from Cooper Union. His work has been reviewed in Art in America, Art Forum, ARTnews and Flash Art.

He has shown work in galleries including CRG, the Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston, and such overseas venues as the Studio La Citta in Verona, Italy, and Galerie Alfred Kren in Cologne, Germany. Feintuch has also participated in group exhibitions including “Figuration” at the Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano, Italy, and “I Love You More Than My Own Death” at the Venice Biennale.

Since 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has awarded more than $265 million in fellowships to more than 16,000 individuals — among them such figures as Ansel Adams, W. H. Auden, Aaron Copland, Martha Graham, Langston Hughes, Henry Kissinger, Vladimir Nabokov, Linus Pauling, Philip Roth, Wendy Wasserstein, Derek Walcott, James Watson and Eudora Welty.

Previous Guggenheim recipients with a �ֲ��ý connection include William Pope.L, a senior lecturer in the theater department and a nationally known conceptual artist, and William Stringfellow, a member of the Class of 1949 known as a peace activist, human rights lawyer and theologian.

Art majors show work at Museum of Art

�ֲ��ý News — Fri, 09 Apr 2004 18:08:29 +0000

Twelve art majors cap their �ֲ��ý College careers with the popular Annual Senior Exhibition, opening with a reception at 7 p.m. Friday, April 9. The exhibit at the �ֲ��ý College Museum of Art, 75 Russell St., runs through May 30 and is open to the public at no charge.

The exhibition highlights work selected from the thesis projects of graduating seniors majoring in studio art. The program emphasizes the creation of a cohesive body of related works through sustained studio practice and critical inquiry. The yearlong process is overseen during the fall semester by Assistant Professor of Art Pamela Johnson, and during the winter semester by Senior Lecturer in Art Robert Feintuch, who also curates the exhibit and oversees its installation.

In alphabetical order, here are the exhibiting artists:

Julia Allen of St. Paul, Minn., has made cups, bowls and vases of porcelain, exploring varying degrees of distortion in order to find forms that imply fluid motion.

Sarita Fellows of Natick, Mass., has used Nigerian printed fabric as a source of inspiration for intensely colored abstract paintings and etchings.

Jon Greer of Chester, N.H., has worked with abstraction, space and light in his monochromatic paintings of fragmented images of the figure.

Using manipulated and anthropomorphic forms, Paul Heckler of Cross River, N.Y., has made a group of high-fired reduction stoneware teapots.

Alison Locke of Troy, Maine, has done a group of paintings of Martha Stewart that evoke journalistic photography and address Stewart’s multifaceted and controversial image.

Working with images of furniture, Graham Macbeth of Ellsworth, Maine, has made paintings and monotypes that play with ideas of geometric abstraction and representation.

Meredith Nutting of Rockville, Md., has used forms found in tree branches as the basis of abstract paintings that explore color interaction and spatial relationships.

Helen O’Donnell of Mount Desert, Maine, has used etching and drypoint to make images that combine handwritten text, abstract imagery and cartoons, and that question traditional ideas of content and meaning.

Through her work in ceramics, Caitlin Reiter of Mystic, Conn., investigates textured surface patterns in a series of monochromatic functional forms that are hybrids of bowls and trays.

In digital photographs that stress color, Elizabeth Sall of Villanova, Pa., shows still-lifes that she found in domestic situations.

Annie Schauer of Louisville, Ky., has made black-and-white photographs of interiors and landscapes that evoke notions of absence and presence.

K-Fai Steele of Charlton, Mass., is interested in the intersection of banality, humor and awe. Her work in the fall semester culminated in the large-scale installation in the Perry Atrium. Her more recent work uses a structure inspired by dollhouses.

The museum is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and is closed Sundays and major holidays. For additional information call 207-786-6158.

Senior art majors show work at �ֲ��ý College Museum of Art

�ֲ��ý News — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 12:39:18 +0000

Twelve art majors, three of them from Maine, cap their �ֲ��ý College careers with the popular Annual Senior Exhibition, opening with a reception at 7 p.m. Friday, April 9. The exhibit at the �ֲ��ý College Museum of Art, 75 Russell Ave., runs through May 30 and is open to the public at no charge.

In alphabetical order, here are the exhibiting artists:

Julia Allen of St. Paul, Minn., has made cups, bowls and vases of porcelain, exploring varying degrees of distortion in order to find forms that imply fluid motion.

Sarita Fellows of Natick, Mass., has used Nigerian printed fabric as a source of inspiration for intensely colored abstract paintings and etchings.

Jon Greer of Chester, N.H., has worked with abstraction, space and light in his monochromatic paintings of fragmented images of the figure.

Using manipulated and anthropomorphic forms, Paul Heckler of Cross River, N.Y., has made a group of high-fired reduction stoneware teapots.

Alison Locke of Troy has done a group of paintings of Martha Stewart that evoke journalistic photography and address Stewart’s multifaceted and controversial image.

Working with images of furniture, Graham Macbeth of Ellsworth has made paintings and monotypes that play with ideas of geometric abstraction and representation.

Meredith Nutting of Rockville, Md., has used forms found in tree branches as the basis of abstract paintings that explore color interaction and spatial relationships.

Helen O’Donnell of Mount Desert has used etching and drypoint to make images that combine handwritten text, abstract imagery and cartoons, and that question traditional ideas of content and meaning.

Through her work in ceramics, Caitlin Reiter of Mystic, Conn., investigates textured surface patterns in a series of monochromatic functional forms that are hybrids of bowls and trays.

In digital photographs that stress color, Elizabeth Sall of Villanova, Pa., shows still-lifes that she found in domestic situations.

Annie Schauer of Louisville, Ky., has made black-and-white photographs of interiors and landscapes that evoke notions of absence and presence.

K-Fai Steele of Charlton, Mass., is interested in the intersection of banality, humor and awe. Her work in the fall semester culminated in the large-scale installation “Me and Jesus” in the Perry Atrium. Her more recent work uses a structure inspired by dollhouses.

It’s noteworthy that a quarter of the artists in this year’s exhibit are Maine natives. “It seems that we always have at least a couple of studio thesis majors from Maine every year, which is pretty high,” Pamela Johnson says.

“I think that spending your life in a state where artists are celebrated makes the idea of participating in culture simply reasonable,” she adds. “The value and purpose of art doesn’t need to be explained or justified — it’s in the fabric of your life.”

The museum is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and is closed Sundays and major holidays. For additional information call 207-786-6158.

Robert Feintuch discusses his paintings

�ֲ��ý News — Mon, 25 Feb 2002 12:12:04 +0000

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.